India Floats Su-57 & S-500 Procurements as Putin Lands for 2025 Delhi Summit

This gambit echoes the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty when Delhi locked in Moscow’s military backing despite U.S. disapproval, and contrasts with the 2005 U.S.–India civil-nuclear accord that briefly tilted procurement westward. Fifty years of Indian procurement cycles show a pendulum: heavy Soviet sourcing in the 1980s, diversification in the 2000s, and now a re-convergence driven by sanctions-buffeted, discount-offering Russia and a Washington increasingly willing to weaponise tariffs. The episode underscores two structural trends: Russia’s need to keep its largest remaining arms market, and India’s determination to preserve “strategic autonomy” by playing suppliers against each other until its own indigenous fighter (AMCA) matures in the 2030s. On a century horizon, such deals matter less for the kit itself—airframes become obsolete—but more for the supply-chain and diplomatic scaffolding they entrench; they reveal whether the emerging multipolar order allows mid-tier powers like India to remain non-aligned in practice, or whether economic coercion will finally lock them into one bloc.