Ukraine - Russia Conflict
- Thread starter randomradio
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The Taliban is not one unitary organization. Most of the factions are positive toward having trade & diplomatic relationship with India, however some (which are historically controlled by the ISI) like the Haqqanis are not. Russia was supposed to give us leverage over them, they didn't.
We had to leave because the security of our diplomatic staff could not be guaranteed. Unlike the Chinese, Pakistanis & Russians.
Did the Russians 'need' to sell arms to Pakistan? Wasn't India buying enough?
You can never attain parity by just accepting the outdated techs they would share. Nobody, not even Russia, will share the absolute top of the line they currently have. Arihant's reactor was based on VM-4, which by that time was already 2 generations old compared to the Soviets' latest. Similarly for the US, the F414 is far from the cutting edge of what they have - B-1B retirements are already happening in anticipation of replacement with B-21.
You need technology inputs either for kick-starting a non-existent industry (like N-subs) or for helping us over a particularly difficult impasse (like happening now with jet engines).
But parity with the supplier can NEVER be attained via such inputs - that can only be done by utilizing these inputs to help us on our own way of domestic R&D for which we will need to pour billions into strategic programs. Until the fruits of the economic reforms came in, we couldn't even dream of affording to do that. Now we can.
But like I said before, when we speak of parity we need to focus on what our threat perceptions for the foreseeable future are. We want parity with whom? Is the VM-4 and OK-650B sufficient technology to take on the Chinese LEU reactors? Absolutely - heck, we may even have the advantage. Is a B-1B a more survivable way of delivering ordnance than a H-6? Hell Yeah. Is the F414 sufficient to obtain superiority in terms of sortie rate, turn-around times & general reliability compared to the WS-series or Russian engines? You cannot even compare the two, 414 is so far ahead.
We cannot have a distant future unless we manage our immediate & foreseeable future properly. I understand that you want to focus more on the 'long-term', but let me tell you it is foolhardy to dream about 'long-term' rivalries with superpowers when the strategic outlook of the short/medium-term itself is so bleak that we are forced to make hard moves to secure our future.
How do you propose we should focus on the 'long-term' when our strategic outlook & energy is totally consumed in recovering the sovereign territory we lost or defending from losing further territory?
You are proposing that we walk with our eyes in the sky, paying no heed to the manholes in front of us. There are existential short & medium-term threats we need to address before thinking of the long-term Global Power ambitions.
Of course they do. But like I said, for Russia the survival of its European core is of paramount importance - everything else is secondary. If ever they are desperate enough that they have to look at another break-up, they'd much rather lose the non-ethnic Russian oblasts & republics East of Urals to China rather than overstretch their resources and lose everything.
Things change. Thinking they won't is like the British saying the sun will never set on the empire.
They've been 'developing technology' for over a decade now.
Our indigenous SCRAMJET demonstrators (HSTDV developed by DRDO and a civilian one developed by ISRO) are already flying. Meanwhile, BrahMos-2 is nowhere to be seen even in prototype demonstrator form.
Either the Russians have hit a major roadblock they cannot overcome, or they don't want to share. Seeing that Zircon tests are progressing, I'm starting to think the latter is the case.
Again, we are taking the crawl, walk, run approach. Which is well advised.
NaVIC was funded for the sole purpose of ensuring availability of navigation signals in the event of foreign services being denied. That is the primary rationale for existence of the program - everything else is secondary.
That would work in a sole-source supplier environment. That's not the case here because the MidEast is a competitor and is ready to sell to anyone.
Additionally, the Russians have another major problem - majority of their wells are under permafrost. If the oil stops pumping & flowing, it freezes over and the whole infrastructure cracks. Last time this happened was during Soviet collapse, and they had to solicit help from Western companies like Haliburton to build their infrastructure back up. If that happens again, they are in big trouble.
China doesn't have the expertise to assist.
Hey, I'm not saying we need to stop importing from Russia. More potential suppliers we have, the better. The problem is coming from the Russian side forcing us to pay in Yuans. We will happily buy as much oil from Russia as possible - but not at the cost of our own national interests, especially in the current environment.
You cannot equate buying with selling. if the Russians wanted to buy a bunch of Baktar Shikan from Pakistan, they are welcome to do so.
We did not supply Pralay SRBMs to Poland or Rudram ARMs to Georgia.
Yeah I corrected the figures in the reply to @RASALGHUL above.
If that's the case why'd they stop accepting Rupees? India is a growth economy, they could have invested so much more.
In the event of a war with China, our supply chains i.e. factories in the hinterland are not safe from cruise or ballistic missile strikes. We need multiplicity & redundancy for everything from small arms & ammo to loitering munitions, armoured vehicles, artillery & missiles.
I'm afraid we don't see eye on eye on that. You have somehow convinced yourself that I'm advocating that we need to ditch Russia - whereas what I'm saying is that Russia has, in several ways, already ditched us. Whether because they don't want to align with us anymore, or because they have made a value judgement between who's more important to them in the coming years & chose China, or simply because they are no longer able to.
In the event of a war with China, I don't want to find us caught holding hands with a Russia that is not even able to supply basic spare parts & components for our war effort - especially as it's now very possible that the INDOPAC could see a hot war while Europe is still on fire.
I understand your long-term apprehensions, and I absolutely share the same - where we don't see eye to eye is with regard to how we get there. In other words, the short & medium term outlook. We need allies & partners who aren't afraid or apprehensive about taking the next steps in competition with China - without that we have no long-term to look forward to.
And you are assuming that once we get into a relationship with someone, we are locked in it for life. It doesn't work that way. When enough time passes & our current 'long-term' perspectives start becoming medium-term, you can bet we'll be shaking hands with new friends at that point.
That's how history works, you cannot see a mere ~70 years of the Republic and think that is a microcosm of our entire civilization. That's nothing.
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No they are not. A lot depends on the composition of local ground. Sandy soil is far different from clay soil and both are different from loam. And they respond to moisture differently as well. And there is also climate as well as local geography to consider.
Some places you will have relatively firm river beds that even heavy machinery (e.g. tanks) can cross without issue, in other places you will have river banks that will swallow vehicles before you can turn. Yet other places you won't even have river banks but instead river will basically transition into a swamp.
Baza
В Симферополе взорвался автомобиль с помощником вице-премьера Запорожской области. Чиновник, а также его секретарь и охранник получили сильные ожоги. Всё произошло на Евпаторийском шоссе в четыре часа утра. Владимир Епифанов — помощник вице-премьера по экономическому развитию Запорожской...
t.me
Ukraine war live: Britain will not drop sanctions if Russia ends the war
The British Government has introduced new legislation which enables sanctions on Russia to be kept in place until Moscow pays compensation to Ukraine.
www.telegraph.co.uk
Definitely not the latest. Ukraine Patriots aren't the latest either using missiles US doesn't use anymore but still very capable to handle anything the Russians throw at it.
While the Chinese and Pakistanis were allied to the Taliban, we weren't.
We left 'cause we saw them as enemies, and the Taliban didn't want to, until Russia stepped in.
I don't see the problem here. It's our miscalculation.
There are plenty of people in the West too who don't like India.
Yes, a pretty good story for the Western narrative. Western money with Indian production and logistics. It was for a very short time and very, very temporary, and it was just business.
The US is attaching QUAD to anything and everything they are doing with India in the Indo-Pacific. But that's not our policy, nor are we engaging with SEA in any shape or form via QUAD.
We are doing nothing in terms of diplomacy or security with SEA via QUAD.
QUAD is purely about India building relations with the other partners within the QUAD grouping.
The Russians were working with the Pakistanis to control their own territories along their border. Even the Russians are dealing with terrorist elements in CAR. Both are effectively neighbours via CSTO.
Getting access to tech cut shorts development time 'cause the forces learn from operating the system and that helps create requirements, like we did with Chakra 1.
In order to compete with the US and China, we need access to the most cutting-edge exotic capabilities operational in India within the decade so we can have the same systems of our own 20 years later. Or we grind like the others did and get crap to improve on 30 years later.
The Arihant program is already over 30 years old and our first real cutting-edge S5 will only enter service in the 2030s, ie 40 years later.
And it's the potential to get not old but new stuff is what's interesting. AUKUS opens the door for Yasen sales to India, which the US has to counter with Virginia, or they lose. The same is possible with PAK FA/PAK DP and NGAD. And PAK DA and B-21. All the Russians have to do is offer one of those, and the US has to counter the Russian offer. The Russians have already offered the S-500/550 and Su-57, and being their only main exporter left, they are bough to make better deals. They have even offered to build a supercarrier for India, which could come with their reactor post AUKUS.
India's problem is in a few years we will have the money to become a major global military power, but we will lack the tech for it.
Russia is expected to start building a whole array of next generation ships in a few years. Can you imagine in 2030 Russia offering an entirely nuclear-powered CBG with their own cutting-edge reactors on the cheap, both carriers and escorts, with the Americans struggling to match that offer?
How do you propose we should focus on the 'long-term' when our strategic outlook & energy is totally consumed in recovering the sovereign territory we lost or defending from losing further territory?
You are proposing that we walk with our eyes in the sky, paying no heed to the manholes in front of us. There are existential short & medium-term threats we need to address before thinking of the long-term Global Power ambitions.
This is not something India is at liberty to choose.
This is not something Russia is at liberty to choose.
In both cases, the Chinese decide. Both countries can only react. The US is in the same boat.
India's indigenous tech is still a long ways away. Brahmos 2's not stalled.
When will the hypersonic variant be ready?
There is still work going on and it will take some time before it is ready. However, it is going to be very expensive and not many orders are expected from the Indian Armed Forces due to its high costs.
Navic is still WIP, it's not suitable for military use. They are hoping it will be in the 2030s.
As of today, only 4 satellites are functioning. It's only suitable for inaccurate civilian service, still inferior to civilian GPS, so they are just using it for research purposes.
That's not how a market functions. Supply has to be controlled to control prices. The ME cannot increase production to the point where they end up with a supply glut. If Russia is completely cut off from the global markets, then they will increase production to the point where the entire global market collapses. It's 'cause there are always buyers of energy. Consumers will just buy it from the black market at $10 per barrel. And that's why suppliers collaborate to control prices.
They are not forcing us to do anything.
There needs to be a political goal behind it. The Russians have that in Af-Pak. We will be pissed if the Russians sell strategic and heavy weapons to Pakistan. Infantry weapons and selling outdated tech is not a real problem.
It's the traders who have stopped taking rupees. And the problem's coming from the Indian side, 'cause both traders and banks fear secondary US sanctions. And the Russians obviously will not want to hold meaningless rupees if the traders and banks are unwilling to take them.
Russia is fine with rupees as long as they are able to actually use them.
Yep, and we have imports from the Russia, US and Israel for that. I have no clue how selling French IP to Ukraine to kill Russians will help India here in any shape or form.
Russia's not ditched India and vice versa. You haven't yet given a single example of this happening.
A war in the Indo-Pacific won't hurt relations with Russia and India because India has not given military importance to QUAD.
The common theme here is water content.
If the water evaporates and the ground dries up, it's gonna become tankable no matter what the composition of the ground is. Tank tracks are made to handle a lot of different types of ground. Tanks can go over ground that we cannot even walk over. So if the Dnieper becomes walkable, then it's definitely gonna be tankable.
For a riverbed to become tankable, yeah, it can take hours to day to weeks depending on the composition of the soil and weather conditions.
Recall images of people walking into areas where the river actually had water? So if they can walk there, a tank can pass through there.
Here's a hilarious perspective from the West:
Apparently, Russia blew up the dam to make a Ukrainian invasion across the dry riverbed easier. That's apparently a 'Russian miscalculation'. Logic has left the building.
We left because Russia didn't do what was expected of them. They looked out for their own interests.
Russia was told by the Pak-China combine that the Russians will be assured of a role in post-US Afghanistan, but in return they must ensure India is excluded, from both the peace talks & in terms of diplomatic presence. The Russians obliged. They prioritized their own interests, at their 'ally's' expense, forgetting decades of cooperation wrt Northern Alliance etc. At the time this was a serious backstab.
The only talks we were part of were those where US was calling the shots.
Russia kept India out, US brings Delhi to talks table for Afghan peace plan
Under UN auspices, US, India, Russia, Pak, China, Iran must meet: Blinken to Ghani
indianexpress.com
QUAD is not meant to replace bilateral relations. All QUAD members still maintain bilateral ties with ASEAN.
But any large-scale attempt to counter BRI (or offer an alternative) cannot & will not be initiated by any one country bilaterally. Nobody can individually muster that level of resources or incentive structures.
The IPEF was born out of QUAD, and is meant to eventually become a counterweight/alternative to the TPP. There are no deliverables that can match the size & scope of IPEF that any QUAD country can do bilaterally.
So the Russians are allowed to sell tactical systems to our enemies in pursuit of their interests but if we do it we are bad?
You cannot put competition with China and competition with the US under the same bracket. The level of tech needed to counter a Shang-class SSN and the level needed to counter a Virginia are worlds apart.
Not to mention, we have no intention of strategic competition with the US in the foreseeable future. Heck, we had no intention of competition with China even when CCP kept pushing us over the edge & salami-slicing our territory. We didn't seek competition even after China turned Pakistan into a nuclear-armed state. It was only after Galwan that we decided enough was enough.
I simply don't see how & why you want us to align our geopolitics to prioritize a long-term hypothetical future enemy over a real, current one.
A re-run of Vikramaditya fiasco waiting to happen seems like.
Never gonna happen though. Right now, India has more carrier-construction expertise than Russia does. No Russian yard knows how to build a carrier from scratch. And there is no need for us to waste billions helping the Russians figure out the A,B,Cs of building a carrier - we'd rather spend those billions on ourselves. Only thing they have expertise on is in putting reactors on surface ships (icebreakers though, not carriers). Don't know how expensive it will be to adapt the knowledge to carriers. Definitely more expensive than necessary, because the real intention of such an offer would be to get India to bankroll the development of a Carrier-building yard for the Russians' own eventual use. No thank you.
We have zero intention of sourcing Carriers from other countries anymore:
Cochin Shipyard readying to commission new dry dock, international ship repair facility: CMD
₹1,800-cr. dry dock on 15 acres will have capability to build bigger vessels, including aircraft carriers
They are at liberty & they do choose.
The Russians usually prioritize their foreign policy in this order: Medium term > Long term > Short term
What you are proposing is that we should prioritize ours like so: Long term > Short term > Medium term
I don't see why we should shape our foreign policy to align with that of Russia's instead of our own interests.
Talk is talk...
BrahMos II to be ready by 2013, says Pillai | Pune News - Times of India
The Indo-Russian joint venture BrahMos Aerospace is working on a project to develop the hypersonic cruise missile BrahMos II', which will have a speed
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
...and progress is progress:
Hypersonic technology demonstrator vehicle can cruise at a speed of Mach 6
The HSTDV, based on hypersonic propulsion technologies, has been developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
5 now, the first of the 2nd-generation sats just went up last month.
NaVIC guidance has been implemented for military applications, just need to scale up the orders.
Pinaka missile system successfully flight-tested for second day
BALASORE: India's indigenously developed Pinaka missile system, which is capable of striking up to range of 75 kilometres, was successfully flight-tested for th
Besides, in the event of a conflict with China we are virtually assured of GPS signals. We only need NaVIC/GLONASS in the now hypothetical event of a West-aligned Pakistan.
You cannot view Russian energy industry through the lens of traditional market forces.
If the MidEast wants to cease all production for a year and then boot it back up once their geopolitical objectives/market prices have been met, they can do that no problem. MidEast is indeed a supplier's market.
Russia cannot do that. If they turn off their production for a year, their infrastructure will have to be decommissioned and rebuilt due to nature of their geography & climate. That process could take a decade. Can Russia survive without energy revenues for a decade? The USSR couldn't survive a price crash for 3 years, and that wasn't even a complete loss of revenue like what we're talking about.
Projection: $110 Billion in Repairs for Russian Pipelines on Permafrost - Eos
Permafrost thaw is a major threat to pipelines in the Russian Arctic, particularly those carrying natural gas.
eos.org
“Sixty-five percent of Russia’s territory is located in the permafrost zone, but this is not mentioned in a single federal program document, despite the fact that the permafrost area is a vital component in the natural environment, of which the landscape, vegetation and coastline is dependent,” Aleksander Kozlov, Russian minister of natural resources and the environment, said in a statement.
In short, Russian energy is not as much of a supplier's market as the MidEast is. Besides, pipelines to Europe like NordStream-2 have been destroyed - and I don't know how long the overland lines going through Belarus & Ukraine could last, the latter is literally in a war zone. Building them back up takes a long time, so it's not going to be possible for Russia to quickly switch from one customer to the other on a whim.
Why should we think China will not leverage that?
If the Russians are fine without the Indian customer (we are buying about half their oil export right now), so are we. Russia is not our only supplier, but we are one of only two big buyers Russia has right now.
Exclusive: India, Russia suspend negotiations to settle trade in rupees
India and Russia have suspended efforts to settle bilateral trade in rupees, after months of negotiations failed to convince Moscow to keep rupees in its coffers, two Indian government officials and a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.
Because we are never going to put significant amount of Yuan in our forex.
Exclusive: India to discourage foreign trade settlement in Chinese yuan - sources
India has asked banks and traders to avoid using Chinese yuan to pay for Russian imports, three government officials involved in policy making and two banking sources said, because of long-running political differences with its neighbour.
The political goal is to strengthen our ties with the US - who are the only partners we can even remotely count on in the event of a war with China.
And that's besides the tactical goals we also have - building up our nascent local industry & supply chains. The Russians don't have that problem.
There is no indication of any sanctions threat for Rupee trade - as long as the price cap is adhered to.
If at all secondary sanctions were coming, they'd hit the countries & banks trading in Yuan much before coming after the Rupee. Besides, if at all sanctions were the fear, why aren't they apprehensive of Yuan in the same way? China's EXIM activities are just as vulnerable as ours, if not even more. China's economy is extremely export dependent.
Sanctions are at best a bad excuse for not wanting to trade in Rupees.
Not enough. The PLA is not the Russian army - they have the world's factory behind them, not the Russians' ill-prepared post-Soviet decadence that forces them to import common items from North Korea & Iran. Besides, you cannot absolutely count on US either - it depends on where their diplomatic & industrial bandwidth stands at that time...if the war in Europe is still going on, there are many Euro-centric voices within the US establishment that would argue in favour of prioritizing the European theater over the INDOPAC. We don't need to become a casualty of that nonsense.
That said, you are drinking the kool-aid if you really think Russia will be donating us weapons during a war with China. The USSR post-1969 would have...even Russia before 2013 could possibly have. But not any more, especially not after 2022.
They have very little diplomatic room to maneuver, they have no room to accommodate exports and even if they did they cannot afford to just give stuff away. Stuff they desperately need for their own war.
In fact, if they hypothetically had the ability, they're much more likely to be supplying China instead. Because US will be supplying us, and there's no way Russia & the US would gang up against China, while fighting a proxy war with each other at the same time. Never gonna happen.
Diplomatically it's a win with the US. In the event of a war with China, don't you want to be able to say to a prickly US senator holding up a $25 billion arms package that "we helped you so you must help us"?
It's an easy win for us without anything to lose - a lot of those missiles would have been decommissioned shortly anyway, they are decades old.
That would have only been an opener - toward eventually securing contracts for production of further systems & munitions, but with the condition of the US/Ramstein group having to finance them. The same infrastructure would eventually be useful for us in a war with China as well.
Why can't you see the importance of that? Especially when contractors like L&T are crying that GOI is removing tax incentives for domestic arms manufacturers?
Because you think that 'ditching' means Putin coming up to Modi and saying "Aaj se tum se katti". It doesn't work like that in the world of geopolitics - you have to be able to read the signs & the writing on the wall.
Like I said, the Russian 'ditching' isn't because they decided to spite us, but a result of diverging interests.
We have diverged on Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Yuan, the Ukraine war, QUAD, the Indo-Pacific, Space, and a multitude of other areas. We are not in the era of the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Friendship & Cooperation anymore. China is Russia's preferred partner in most if not all of those aspects.
A result of a combination of the Russians' current geopolitical position, their strengths & weaknesses, and their inability to accommodate our interests. We went over a bunch of them in our discussion alone. Problem is, you think the Russians are justified in pursuing their national interest even if it comes at India's expense.
I don't dispute that - where we don't see eye to eye is when you think we should prioritize our long-term interests (where we find alignment with Russia) OVER our short/medium-term ones (where it aligns more with the West).
If you truly think that Russia views China as a long-term threat and the reason why they decided to help India with exotic techs is not because they are good of heart, but because they hope to develop us into a counterweight to China - there's no reason for you to think that will become any less true even if India decides to supply weapons to Ukraine. Russia should continue to view China as a long-term threat and realize that even though we supplied weapons for our own benefit, India's sphere of interest does not really clash with Russia's core interests and that they will continue to need us as a counterweight to PRC.
Problem is, you read the Russia-Pakistan relationship correctly - that despite history of enmity, they're doing whatever they're doing because it's in their interests. But for some reason when it comes to Russia-India you seem to think the Russians will act irrationally and/or hold a grudge if we make moves against them in our own interest.
Your view of Russia is not consistent. Are they a rational actor or an irrational one?
We exercise with QUAD, we do not exercise with Vostok when it comes to the INDOPAC.
That should tell you where we stand in the Indo-Pacific.
And where Russia stands:
Quad, AUKUS attempts to contain China: Russia - Times of India
Rest of World News: Russia on Friday lashed out at the US and multilateral groupings like the Quad, of which India is a member, and AUKUS as moves to contain China, at th
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
The INDOPAC is another area where our interests & views have greatly diverged.
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The common theme here is that you're not from Europe and have no clue about the composition of European river beds.