India’s air force needed Russian supplies. Russia said the war had got in the way.

India’s defence relationship with Russia did not end when the war in Ukraine began. It became less reliable on the delivery timetable. In a statement published by a parliamentary committee, the Indian Air Force said Russia could not provide vital supplies it had committed to deliver because of the war.

Reuters reported the statement on 23 March 2023. The Air Force told the committee that Russia had planned a “major delivery” during 2023 that would not take place. The report did not identify the delivery, its value or the revised schedule. That missing detail is important. The case establishes a material failure to meet a commitment, not a list of every affected aircraft, ship, missile or spare part.

The report also recorded a Russian denial. A spokesperson for the Russian Embassy in New Delhi said: “We don’t have information which may confirm the stated.” Reuters said there was no immediate response from Rosoboronexport, the Russian government’s weapons-export arm. The Indian account and the Russian response should remain side by side. The source does not resolve whether the missed delivery was caused by a particular factory, component, transport route or export decision.

One large programme was visible in the background. Reuters reported that India had bought five S-400 Triumf air-defence system units from Russia in 2018 for $5.4 billion. Three had been delivered and two were still awaited when the report was published. The article did not say that the “major delivery” referred to the S-400. It also reported that the Indian Air Force depended on Russia for spares for Su-30MKI and MiG-29 fighters. Those facts show the range of the relationship, not the identity of the missed shipment.

The dependence was substantial but not total. Reuters said Russia and the Soviet Union had been India’s main source of arms and defence equipment for decades. It cited Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data showing that Russia accounted for $8.5 billion of the $18.3 billion India had spent on arms imports since 2017. The figures describe the value and origin of imports in the cited period. They do not show that every Indian system was Russian-made or that every Russian supply line was disrupted.

India had already been trying to reduce that dependence. Reuters reported that New Delhi had looked towards France, the United States and Israel during the previous two decades and was pushing Indian companies to produce more at home with global partners. It also noted that India was buying French fighter jets, Israeli drones and US jet engines. Diversification was therefore an existing policy direction, not a response invented after the missed delivery.