Europe can emulate Indo-Russian defence cooperation: Putin

MOSCOW: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held up Indo-Russian defence cooperation as a good example for Europe to emulate. At a meeting with foreign experts on Russia in the Valdai discussion club Mr. Putin said Europe was missing a chance to make money when it turned down his repeated offers to jointly undertake defence projects out of fear to cooperate with Russia in such a sensitive sphere.

He said Israel had no such fears and agreed to supply radars for the Russian Il-76 aircraft in a successful project to create an airborne early warning system for India.

Mr. Putin also gave the example of the BRAHMOS supersonic missile Russia and India have jointly built. “We have built a very good missile, BRAHMOS, that we too will induct in our armed forces,” he said.

Military transport plane

The Russian Premier further said Russia and India would jointly design and manufacture a military transport aircraft, which was something that only Russia and the U.S. could build so far. Instead of snooping around for the blueprints of the [Russian-Ukrainian] An-70 transport plane, our German and French friends should have joined forces with us and built a good military transport aircraft with a short takeoff and ability to operate from unpaved airfields, which they don’t have,” Mr. Putin said. He said Russia and India were now building a fifth-generation attack aircraft of the kind that Europe did not have either.

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