Artillery shells sold by Indian arms makers have been diverted by European customers to Ukraine. New Delhi has not intervened to stop the trade despite protests from Moscow, according to eleven Indian and European government and defence industry officials, as well as a Reuters analysis of commercially available customs data.
According to Reuters, the transfer of munitions to support Ukraine’s defence against Russia has occurred for more than a year. Indian arms export regulations limit the use of weaponry to the declared purchaser, who risks future sales being terminated if unauthorised transfers occur.
The Kremlin has raised the issue on at least two occasions, including during a July meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Indian counterpart, Reuters quoted three Indian officials as saying.
Details of the ammunition transfers are reported by Reuters for the first time.
Two Indian government and two defence industry sources told Reuters that Delhi produced only a very small amount of the ammunition being used by Ukraine, with one official estimating that it was under 1% of the total arms imported by Kyiv since the war. The news agency couldn’t determine if the munitions were resold or donated to Kyiv by the European customers.
Among the European countries sending Indian munitions to Ukraine are Italy and the Czech Republic, which is leading an initiative to supply Kyiv with artillery shells from outside the European Union, according to a Spanish and a senior Indian official, as well as a former top executive at Yantra India, a state-owned company whose munitions are being used by Ukraine, the report said.
Commercially available customs records show that in the two years before the February 2022 invasion, three major Indian ammunition makers – Yantra, Munitions India and Kalyani Strategic Systems – exported just $2.8 million in munitions components to Italy and the Czech Republic, as well as Spain and Slovenia, where defence contractors have invested heavily in supply chains for Ukraine, Reuters noted.
Between February 2022 and July 2024, the figure had increased to $135.25 million, the data show, including completed munitions, which India began exporting to the four nations.
India exported just over $3 billion of arms between 2018 and 2023, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think-tank.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said at an Aug. 30 conference that defence exports surpassed $2.5 billion in the last fiscal year and that Delhi wanted to increase that to about $6 billion by 2029.