India’s Economic Times, citing anonymous sources, reported this weekend that Pakistan “has been supplying arms to Ukraine on a regular basis” and has prepared a new shipment of rockets to the country with the help of Germany.
Pakistan has longstanding economic and diplomatic ties to Ukraine, but it has traditionally been the purchaser of military hardware, not the seller.
Both Pakistan and India have taken officially neutral stances on Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine – a full-scale military invasion that began last year, but escalated a conflict between Russia-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government that began with the Russian colonization of Crimea in 2014. Pakistan and India have publicly maintained ties to both countries and abstained from any partisan comments on the matter at the United Nations, opting to use debates on the war to change topics and insult each other, instead.
The news of potential weapons shipments from Pakistan to Ukraine follow a year of dramatic improvement in the economic relationship between India and Russia. New Delhi has capitalized on Russia’s fuel imports declining in price, a result of Western sanctions, to buy unprecedented amounts of Russian oil and coal. Responding to European and American criticism for maintaining a relationship with Russia, Indian officials have pointed to diplomatic cooperation and weapons sales between the West and Pakistan, “a military dictatorship next to us.”
The Economic Times, the most widely read English-language business newspaper in the world after the Wall Street Journal, cited unspecified “people familiar” to report on Saturday that a shipment of rockets is on its way to Germany for Ukrainian military use.
“Supplies of rockets were dispatched from the Karachi Port earlier this month and will enter Ukraine via Emden Port in Germany, said the people,” the newspaper claimed. “More than 10,000 rockets meant for use in Grad multi-barrel rocket launchers have been shipped, they said.”
The Economic Times claimed that Pakistan had already sent 146 shipping containers to Ukraine on Monday and “another shipment of 50,000 defense stores was reportedly sent by Pakistan Ordnance Factories via Karachi.” The newspaper claimed that the arrangement was the product of a deal in which the Ukrainian government promised to help the Pakistani military upgrade its fleet of Mi-17 helicopters.
At the time of the report being published, Pakistan was preparing for a scheduled meeting on Monday with defense officials in Washington. American-Pakistani defense talks are meant to address, unnamed sources told the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, regional security issues as well as “defense and security cooperation, strategic coordination, key regional and global issues.” While the report did not name Ukraine as a specific item on the defense agenda, the administration of far-left American President Joe Biden has prioritized pressuring foreign nations, no matter how seemingly unrelated to Eastern European regional conflicts, into supporting Ukraine.
Neither the governments of Pakistan nor Ukraine have confirmed any reports of Pakistani weapons shipments to the government in Kyiv. The two countries have also not made any major public displays of support since the war began last year, such as high-level visits by each other’s leaders. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has traveled only to America, Poland, and the United Kingdom since the war began, but has welcomed a parade of presidents and other world leaders to Kyiv is displays of solidarity.
At the time of the beginning of the Russian “special operation,” Pakistan’s then-prime minister, Imran Khan, was in Moscow – condemning India for its territorial claims in Kashmir. Khan’s office “expressed regret” about the situation in Ukraine but did not take sides.
Khan, a radical Islamist with a massive following at home, was ousted from the top government position in his country later that year. The current prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, has not made any major changes to Pakistan’s public stance on the Ukraine invasion, however. Pakistan’s relationship with Ukraine has traditionally changed little in the face of changing government administrations.
Pakistan cemented official ties with Ukraine shortly after its post-Soviet founding in 1996. Pakistan has long maintained a significant trade imbalance with Ukraine as it has relied on the European state for both a variety of military assets, including battle tanks, and wheat.
“Pakistan had purchased more than 320 Ukrainian T-80UD tanks in service with a fully formed ecosystem for their upkeep, use, ammunition and spare parts,” the Economic Times documented. “Between 1991 and 2020, Ukraine and Pakistan concluded arms contracts worth nearly $1.6 billion. Pakistan has reportedly clinched a deal with Ukraine for the repair of its T-80UD fleet at a cost of $85.6 million.”
Ukraine has also reached out to sell its weapons to India, successfully on occasion, but India has depended far more heavily on purchases of Russian hardware. India’s trade volume with Russia reached an all-time high in November, largely on the back of cheap Russian oil. Russia rose from India’s 25th largest trade partner prior to the “special operation” to being its seventh-largest.
A report published by Reuters on Monday, citing multiple Russian media outlets, suggested that weaponry was also significant in increasing trade volume. Citing the Russian news agency Interfax, Reuters reported that India had purchased $13 billion from Russia in the past five years.
“India is the world’s biggest buyer of Russian arms, accounting for around 20% of Moscow’s current order book, and New Delhi has not explicitly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Reuters noted. “Annual arms exports were about $14-15 billion, and the order book has remained steady at around $50 billion, Interfax reported.”
“Russia remains one of the key players on India’s weapons market. In particular, the total value of Russian defense exports to India exceeded $13 billion in the past five years,” Russian Director of the Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation Dmitry Shugayev confirmed to Tass, another Russian news agency, on Monday.
Russian Ambassador to India Denis Alipov applauded New Delhi on Monday for resisting what he called “unprecedented pressure on India” to support Ukraine.
“India, as an emerging global power and one of the leaders of the developing world, rejects foreign coercion, values its independence and ‘strategic autonomy,'” Alipov said. “It is guided by its national interests, especially amid the food and energy crises.”
Repeatedly confronted about its Russian purchases, Indian officials have pointed to years-long Western support for Pakistan as one reason for Russia’s proximity to India.
“We have a long-standing relationship with Russia, and this relationship has served our interests well,” Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar explained in October. “We have, as you know, a substantial inventory of Soviet and Russian-origin weapons, and that inventory actually grew for a variety of reasons.”
“You know, the merits of the weapon systems themselves,” he continued, “but also because for multiple decades, Western countries did not supply weapons to India, and in fact saw a military dictatorship next to us as the preferred partner.”
During a vote in October to condemn Russia’s “annexation” of four regions of Ukraine a month prior, the representatives for India and Pakistan both abstained from the vote, but not before attacking each other.
“[Pakistani U.N. envoy Munir Akram] said states cannot be torn apart by the use of force and these principles must be consistently and universally respected,” Pakistan’s state radio network reported at the time. “He said Pakistan looks forward to seeing similar concern and condemnation about the attempts by India to formalize its illegal annexation of the internationally recognized disputed territory of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir in complete violation of international law and relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council on Jammu and Kashmir.”
India’s representative at the General Assembly, Ruchira Kamboj, called Akram’s comments “frivolous and pointless.”
“Such statements deserve our collective contempt and sympathy for a mindset which repeatedly utters falsehoods,” Kamboj replied.
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