India-Russia Joint Military Exercise Scheduled For November

"Indra-2018," the tri-service joint military exercise between India and Russia, will be held from Nov. 18-28 in the Asian country, the representatives of Russia’s Eastern Military District and the Armed Forces of India said in a final preparatory training conference Tuesday.

"The parties decided that the exercise will take place at the proving ground near Babin of Uttar Pradesh of the Republic of India from November 18 to 28 of the current year. About 250 servicemen of a motorized rifle unit from the Primorsky Territory are planned to be deployed from the Russian side,” the representatives said, according to Russian daily RIA.

The military exercise was launched in 2003 as bilateral drill between the two countries to boost cooperation. However, in 2017, it was made into tri-services military exercise to involve all the three services of the Armed Forces (Army, Navy and Air Force) and was held at Vladivostok, Russia, in October last year.

In the meantime, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet for bilateral talks Oct. 5. Putin’s top foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov said Tuesday the president will oversee the signing of the S-400 air defense systems deal as part of his two-day visit to India.

Responding to questions on the S-400 deal, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “Putin is going to India on an official visit. A package of agreements is to be signed. It is true that the theme of military-technical cooperation will be on the agenda,” daily newspaper the Indian Express reported.

The deal has irked India’s defense partner Washington, who threatened Delhi and other allies with sanctions if the pacts go through. However, despite the pressure from the United States, India said it will go ahead with the acquisition of the missiles from Russia and ask Washington for a special waiver from sanctions.

After Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Washington imposed sanctions on the former under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). This allowed the nation to impose sanctions on countries engaging in military transactions with Russia.

Referring to CAATSA, Indian Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said it was an American law and not a United Nations’ law and that India has conveyed its position on the issue to the U.S.

“Our defense relation with Russia has endured several decades and we have conveyed about it to a U.S. Congressional delegation which visited India recently,” she said.

Ahead of a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defense ministers that begins in Brussels on Wednesday, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, said Tuesday that Washington would be prepared to consider a military strike if Russia continued to develop a banned cruise missile system.

"At that point, we would be looking at the capability to take out a (Russian) missile that could hit any of our countries," she told in a press conference, local daily the Times Of India reported.

Despite Moscow consistently denying any violations, Washington believes Russia was developing a ground-launched medium-range missile in breach of a Cold War treaty that would allow it to launch a nuclear strike at NATO countries at very short notice.