Russia pledges to provide more weapons to Pakistan, despite unease in India

Notwithstanding unease in New Delhi, Russia on Wednesday pledged to provide more ‘special’ military equipment to Pakistan and hold more bilateral wargames both in the mountains as well as in the Arabian Sea.

“We stand ready to strengthen the anti-terrorist potential of Pakistan, including by supplying it with special military equipment,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after a meeting with his counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Islamabad. “We also agreed that we need to conduct more exercises and drills in the mountains along with maritime excises as well in the Arabian Sea soon,” said Lavrov, who clubbed his visits to India and Pakistan, apparently to send out a subtle message to New Delhi.

His was also the first visit by a Russian Foreign Minister to Pakistan since 2012.

New Delhi in the past conveyed its concerns over Moscow’s growing defence cooperation with Islamabad.

Russia has since long been the largest supplier of military hardware to India and has been maintaining a low-key relationship with Pakistan.

But with the changes in the geopolitical landscape and New Delhi’s growing ties with Washington DC since the landmark India-US civil nuclear agreement of 2008, Moscow too started responding to Islamabad’s overtures to improve bilateral relations. They started discussing the sale of Russian Mi-35 attack helicopters to Pakistan in 2014 and the delivery of the choppers purportedly began in 2018, although New Delhi had conveyed to Moscow its concerns over the deal.

Russia also inked a defence cooperation agreement with Pakistan in November 2015 and the two nations had the first joint military drill in September-October, 2016 – just weeks after India signed the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement with the US. The last annual exercise between the Russian Army and the Pakistan Army took place in November 2020.

Read | Pak FM Qureshi, Russia’s Lavrov agree to further promote cooperation in defence, counter-terrorism

New Delhi in the past alerted the international community that the funds provided to Pakistan to support its counterterrorism operations had in fact been used to finance the export of terror to India. Besides, the military hardware provided to Pakistan had also been used against India.

Qureshi tweeted after his meeting with Lavrov on Wednesday that he had shared with the Russian Foreign Minister Pakistan’s perspective on “larger questions of peace and security” in South Asia and “worsening human rights situation” in Jammu and Kashmir, which Islamabad had been accusing India of illegally occupying. Lavrov welcomed recent steps taken by Pakistan and India towards restoring a degree of normalcy in bilateral relations.

He was apparently referring to the agreement the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army agreed upon a few weeks back to refrain from violating the 2003 ceasefire agreement and stop cross-border firing.

Russia and Pakistan also agreed to present coordinated views in international organisations such as the United Nations to best serve the interests of both the nations, Lavrov said after his meeting with Qureshi.

The erstwhile United Soviet Socialist Republic had in the past steadfastly supported New Delhi on the issue of Jammu and Kashmir — the core issue of conflict between India and Pakistan — since 1955. Moscow had exercised its veto five times at the United Nations Security Council to support New Delhi on the issue of J&K – in 1957 and 1962 and thrice during the India-Pakistan war in 1971. India and Russia, both being victims of terrorism, had also echoed each other in denouncing the menace, particularly its use by one state against the other.

Russia had also thrown in its weight behind India when Pakistan and China made attempts to bring the issue of J&K back on the agenda of the UN Security Council after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Government in New Delhi had on August 5, 2019, moved to strip the erstwhile state of its special status and reorganized it into two Union Territories.

What however resulted in strains in New Delhi’s ties with Moscow was India’s growing strategic convergence with the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly in the wake of the military stand-off with China along the Line of Actual Control or the de facto boundary between the two neighbours in the western sector.

Lavrov had a meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in New Delhi on Tuesday. He tacitly conveyed Russia’s unease over India’s engagement with Japan, Australia and the United States in the ‘Quad’ – a coalition, which the four nations forged to build as a bulwark of democratic nations to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region.