US eyes India’s plan to buy Russian air defence system

The United States has said it has held discussions with India about New Delhi’s proposed purchase of the S-400 air defence missile system from Russia that, under a new American law, could be potentially determined as sanctionable activity.

In a carefully worded statement to HT, the US state department did not directly say if the purchase of the weapon system by India was sanctionable.

Refusing to confirm or deny discussions on this issue with the US, an Indian official in New Delhi said, “India’s relations with third countries (such as Russia) were not a part of discussions with the US and our defence requirements were determined by us only, independent of pressures and outside influence.”

India and Russia finalised an inter-governmental agreement on the S-400 Triumf air defence systems in October 2016 and are currently in advanced negotiations for at least five systems worth an estimated $4.5 billion. The negotiations have been stuck because of differences over the price, Indian officials said.

Reports have suggested India and Russia will try to sort out these differences during defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s upcoming visit to Moscow. Vladimir Drozhzhov, deputy head of Russia’s federal service for military-technical cooperation, told reporters on Thursday Moscow hopes to ink the deal with New Delhi in 2018. But the deal could set India and the US on a “collision course”, Cara Abercrombie, a US defence department official with expertise on military ties with India, wrote in an op-ed in an online publication, this week.

It could leave India open to sanctions under the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which mandates the US administration to punish entities engaging “in a significant transaction with...the defense or intelligence sectors” of Russia.