India and Russia on Tuesday inked a 500-million-dollar deal for construction of two stealth frigates in Goa for the Navy. Russia will provide design, technology and some material to public sector Goa Shipyard Limited (GSL)for construction of these Grigorovich class ships.
Incidentally, the two countries signed another one billion dollar deal some weeks back for two more stealth frigates of the same class. Russia will build these ships at Yantar Shipyard, Kaliningrad and are expected to be delivered to the Indian Navy by 2022-23. India and Russia had agreed in 2016 for a deal to build two frigates in India and two to be imported from Russia.
As regards the two frigates to be built here, officials said here the agreement for the project was signed between GSL and Russia's state-run defence major Rosoboronexport under the government-to-government framework for defence cooperation. Construction of the ships will begin in 2020 and the first one will be ready for induction in 2026 while second one will be ready by 2027.
In another development, Russia emerged as the lowest bidder for a 1.5 billion dollar deal for supplying very short range air defence systems to the Indian Army. These missiles are shoulder fired to take down aerial targets and the proposed deal envisages supply of around 5,180 missiles and about 800 launchers, officials said. The other two contenders in the race were France and Sweden.
The firming up of the agreement to build two frigates here came nearly six weeks after India signed an agreement with Russia to buy a batch of S-400 air defence missile systems at a cost of around 5 billion dollars.
India is going ahead with mega defence deals with Russia disregarding warnings by the US of sanctions. The Trump administration has put several Russian firms under sanctions under Countering America's
Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). The US said countries engaged with Russia's defence firms may also face actions under CAATSA. India has been hoping to get a waiver from the US on the deals it was signing with Russia.
Russia is time tested strategic and defence partners of India and is the largest weapon supplier to the Indian forces. The defence and security cooperation has been on an upswing between the two countries in the last few years.