This is a series, I in the world. I'm John Bachelor. I welcome Saturn on Du Mayon,

writing his column for the Wall Street Journal editorial page, he's at the American Enterprise Institute,

about the relationship between Delhi, India, the Republic of India, and the Kremlin, Russia,

the Russian Federation, especially during these fraught times of the war in Ukraine

and the apparent larger and larger threat out of the Middle East.

Saturn on a very good evening to you, I go right away to the statistic that's often cited

when we talk about India and Russia, and that is arms trades, arms shipment.

There was the story once upon a time that India, this is 20th century

talk, depended entirely on the Soviet model. What are the facts today? Good evening to you.

Very good evening to you, John. It's a great question.

So the short answer is that India still depends to a large degree on Russian weapons, but that dependence has reduced dramatically

compared to even just a decade ago, let alone compared to during the Cold War when

it was almost entirely dependent on Russian armaments.

So the latest figures from this Swedish think tank Cypriot on this is that between 2009 and 2003, 76% of India's weapons, arms imports, came from Russia.

And then in the most recent five-year period they have, which is 2019 to 2023 that had halved so it gone from 76 to 36 percent so it's

coming down very dramatically but 36 percent is still a significant amount it's

still more than one-third of India's total arms imports.

The second factor there is that on some high-end weapons, India is still dependent on Russia.

For example, it's only leased nuclear submarine

was from the Russians, and India has bought the S400

missile defense system.

So there's a combination of bulk supplies which has come down

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