Also, for context, these ships were ordered by India well before the current war (2018 according to the article).
Also, from the original Bloomberg article (and not in the Kyiv Independent) - "SIPRI, an independent think tank that studies the global weapons trade, notes in a recent report that it is the first time in six decades that Russia made up less than half of India’s weapons imports"
India and Russia have a long standing relationship of buyer / supplier of military hardware. The sanctions presumably refer to Russia being blocked from US dominated financial systems but workarounds are now quite well tread - India will just pay in another currency.
India tries to partially pre-pay on defense deals because the Indian govt has procurement laws banning companies that supply Pakistan and China with military gear from selling to India.
By pre-paying, India is able to lock in vendors from supplying the other two.
This was a major reason India began pushing weapons deals with Israeli and French companies in the 1990s-2000s to attempt to block Chinese and Pakistani procurement respectively, and why India will continue to procure token amounts of weapons from Russian companies.
They used to do the same with Ukraine after the Soviet Union collapsed (eg. India's aircraft carriers were built by BSG in Ukraine), but they ended up selling to Pakistan in the early 90s.
> India will just pay in another currency
Long term procurement has switched away from Russia.
The move already began around 2014-16 due to Sukhoi's failure to deliver the Su57 on time while CAC was able to deliver the JF17 and J20 ahead of schedule, messing up India's ability to fight a two front war against Pakistan and China if needed.
At this point, current Russian munitions deliveries to India are from orders that were closed in the 2009-18 time period.
Most greenfield procurement in India is now either indigenous, or French, Israeli, and now American in origin.
Indonesia is in the same boat and has switched greenfield procurement from Russia to Hyundai and other Korean companies as a result after signing a defense treaty with the US and China in Nov 2023 (and imo the primary reason for why Biden is trying to find a compromise for the Israel-Palestine issue).
Also, for context, these ships were ordered by India well before the current war (2018 according to the article).
Also, from the original Bloomberg article (and not in the Kyiv Independent) - "SIPRI, an independent think tank that studies the global weapons trade, notes in a recent report that it is the first time in six decades that Russia made up less than half of India’s weapons imports"