India cancelled orders for Russian jets, says US senator

Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu made the claim in a committee meeting

Claiming that India had cancelled orders for MiG 29 jets, Russian helicopters and anti-tank weapons over the past few weeks, an American senator said that procuring military hardware from Russia would be difficult for India due to financial sanctions imposed.

“If you don’t own a banking system, it’s very hard for other countries to pay millions of dollars in roubles, yen or in euros to pay for these defence systems. So I do think many countries that have this legacy, Russian systems will be worried, not only worried about buying new fancy systems like the S-400, but worried just about ammunition, spare parts of basic supplies for Russian legacy systems that they already have, I would guess that India is one of those countries worried about that,” Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu was quoted as saying in a report by The Indian Express.

In this context, it would be unnecessary to invoke sanctions against "an important security partner" over the deals concerning S-400 anti-aircraft systems, Lu told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a hearing on US-India relations.

Also Read — India subtly changes stand, but not to go against Russia

“It’s my view that it’s going to be very hard for anyone to buy major weapon systems from Moscow in the coming months and years, given the sweeping financial sanctions that the administration with the support of Congress has levelled on Russia, the Russian banking system,” Lu was quoted as saying in the report.

The committee hearing took place hours after a vote in the General Assembly on “Russian aggression,” from which India abstained.

According to the report, he said that the US Secretary of State had been “in the frontline” of a “pitched battle” to get India on the same page as the US on the Ukraine issue, and that there had been an “evolution” in India’s position, and “in addition, we are asking India to do more”.

On the issue of India refraining from casting its vote in the UN, Lu was quoted as saying that "India is a really important security partner of ours... We value moving forward in that partnership... India will find it's now time to further distances (from Russia)."

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