Putin's visit could help sort out glitches in India-Russia defence ties

NEW DELHI: Russia remains extremely miffed with India for selecting French Rafale fighters and American Apache attack helicopters over its products but maintains that its recently inked military cooperation pact with Pakistan will not be "detrimental" to Indian security interests.
India, of course, is angry with Russia's move to lift an informal arms embargo and directly supply Mi-35 attack helicopters to Pakistan."Russia is obviously getting back at us for increasingly turning to the US, France, Israel and others for weapon supplies. But we cannot put all our eggs in one (Russian) basket," a senior defence official said.
President Vladimir Putin's visit here on December 10 is expected to ease some heartburn among the two staunch allies, which has seen Russia notching arms sales to India worth well over $40 billion since the first MiG-21s in 1963.
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Russian ambassador Alexander M Kadakin told reporters on Monday that the agreement with Pakistan did not envisage arms transfers to Islamabad in the immediate future. Dubbing India as his country's "closest friend and strategic partner", he said Moscow's growing relationship with Islamabad will not be at New Delhi's expense.
But the irritants are there for all to see. Russia, for instance, says Indian MiG fighters will only stop crashing when India stops buying "counterfeit (spare) parts" from Israel, Bulgaria and others. Then, even before IAF has completed its court of inquiry into the Sukhoi-30MKI's crash near Pune on October 14, Russia has blamed "pilot error" for it.
IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha had initially stated that "automatic firing of ejection seats" could have led to the mishap. On Monday, an IAF officer said, "All technical issues to do with the seat ejection are still under examination. All possibilities, which involve technical defect and human error, are being examined in great detail."
Kadakin had earlier also questioned India's decision to go in for French jets for the yet-to-be-inked $20 billion MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) project, holding the Rafales could be "swatted like mosquitoes on an August night" by the Russian-origin Sukhoi-27s being inducted by China. On Monday, he compared the Rafales to "beautifully-clad lady dragonflies" that can easily be squashed by Russian fighters.
Amid all this wrangling, both India and Russia are keen to seal the futuristic fifth-generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) project, the biggest-ever defence programme between the two.
The final R&D FGFA contract – hanging fire for close to three years now -- will not be inked during Putin's visit. But there is hope that the pace of negotiations will gather momentum, with India already telling Russia to "compress" the delivery timeframes for the stealth fighter.