Druzhba-Dosti: Still a key piece in India’s foreign policy

News Snapshot:

A journalist asked External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in Canberra on October 10 last year if India would lessen its reliance on Russia for weapons in view of President Vladimir Putin’s military aggression against Ukraine. Jaishankar responded by acknowledging that India indeed had a long-standing relationship with Russia and a substantial inventory of weapons with origins in the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) or its successor state. “That inventory actually grew for a variety of reasons – you know, the merits of the weapon systems themselves, but also because, for multiple decades, western countries did not supply weapons...