NEW DELHI, Sept 19 (Askume) – Artillery shells sold by Indian arms makers are being shipped to Ukraine by European customers but New Delhi has not intervened to stop the trade despite protests from Moscow, according to a Askume analysis of 11 Indian and European government and defence industry officials as well as commercially available customs data.
Sources and customs data show that arms transfers to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia have been going on for more than a year. Indian arms export rules restrict access to weapons to declared buyers, threatening to end future sales if unauthorized transfers occur.
Three Indian officials said the Kremlin raised the issue on at least two occasions, including at a meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Indian counterpart in July.
Askume first revealed details of the ammunition transfer.
The Russian and Indian foreign affairs and defense ministries did not respond to questions. In January this year, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said in a press conference that India had not sent or sold artillery shells to Ukraine.
Two Indian government and defense industry sources told Askume that Delhi was producing a very small amount of ammunition for use in Ukraine, with one official estimating the amount was less than 1 percent of the ammunition imported by Kiev since the war began. The news agency was unable to determine whether the ammunition was resold by European customers or donated to Kiev.
European countries sending Indian arms to Ukraine also include Italy and the Czech Republic, which supplies artillery shells to Kiev from outside the EU, according to a senior Spanish and Indian official and a former senior official at Yantra India, a state-owned company whose weapons are being used in Ukraine.
Indian officials said Delhi was monitoring the situation. But they and a defense industry official with direct knowledge of the change said India had not yet taken any action to halt supplies to Europe. Like most of the 20 people interviewed by Askume, they spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The defence ministries of Ukraine, Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic did not respond to requests for comment.
India and Washington, Ukraine’s key security backer, have recently stepped up defence and diplomatic cooperation amid the growing influence of China, which both countries consider a major rival.
India has maintained friendly ties with Russia, its main arms supplier, for decades , with Prime Minister Narendra Modi refusing to join the Western-led sanctions regime targeting Moscow.
But Delhi, long the world’s biggest arms importer, also sees Europe’s long wars as an opportunity to grow its nascent arms export sector, according to six Indian sources familiar with official thinking.
Ukraine is struggling to stop the Russian offensive on the eastern logistics hub of Pokrovsk but is facing a severe shortage of artillery ammunition .
The White House declined to comment and the US State Department referred questions about Delhi’s arms exports to the Indian government.
Data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a think tank, shows that India exported arms worth nearly $3 billion between 2018 and 2023.
Defence exports exceeded $2.5 billion last fiscal year and Delhi hopes to increase it to around $6 billion in 2029, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said at a meeting on August 30.
Commercially available customs records show that in the two years before the February 2022 invasion, three of India’s largest ammunition manufacturers — Yantra, Munitions India and Kalyani Strategy Systems — had exported goods to Italy, the Czech Republic and SpainDollar .
The figure rose to $135.25 million between February 2022 and July 2024, including finished munitions that India has begun exporting to four countries, the data showed.
Arzhan Tarapore, an Indian defense expert at Stanford University, said Delhi’s efforts to increase arms exports were the main reason for the transfer of weapons to Ukraine.
“Perhaps in response to the recent expansion, there have been some cases of end-user breaches.”
Confidential Delivery
Unlisted Italian defence contractor Meccanica par l’Electronica e Servomechanisme (MES) is one of the companies supplying Indian-made artillery shells to Ukraine, a former senior official of the company said.
MES is the biggest foreign customer of the device. The Rome-based company buys empty cartridges from India and fills them with explosives, the official said.
The executive said many Western companies have the capability to fill explosives but do not have the manufacturing capacity to produce artillery shells on a large scale.
Yantra said in its 2022-23 annual report that it had agreed a deal with an unnamed Italian customer, which a former Yantra executive described as MES, to build the L15A1 shell production line.
MES and Yantra India did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Customs data shows that between February 2022 and July 2024, Yantra shipped 155mm L15A1 blank ammunition worth $35 million to the MES.
Customs records also show that in February 2024, the UK-based Dins Hill Arms Company, whose board of directors includes a senior MES official, exported ammunition worth $6.7 million from Italy to Ukraine.
The exported ammunition included 155 mm L15A1 artillery shells, which the customs declaration said were manufactured by MES for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and supplied to “support Ukraine’s defense capabilities and mobilization preparations”.
Dinshill did not respond to an email seeking comment. Its new owner, Rome-based Afquattro Consulting, could not be reached.
In another example, Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente posted on social media in May
Pro-Palestinian activists claimed that the Indian arms transport Borkham, docked in a Spanish port, was carrying weapons to Israel.
In May, Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that the final destination was in fact Ukraine. A Spanish official and another person familiar with the matter confirmed to Askume that Kiev was the end user. The Ordnance Corporation of India and the CDS did not respond to queries.
Customs records dated March 27 show that Munitions India shipped 10,000 rounds of 120 mm and 125 mm mortars worth over $9 million to the CDS from Chennai.
friendly fire
Russia accounts for more than 60% of Delhi’s arms imports and is an important partner of India. In July, Modi chose Moscow for his first bilateral international visit after being re-elected for a third term .
The same month, at another meeting in Kazakhstan between India’s top diplomats Jaishankar and Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister asked his Russian counterpart about the use of Indian weapons in Ukraine and complained that some of the weapons were manufactured by Indian government companies, according to Indian officials with direct knowledge of the meeting.
Officials appeared to disagree with Jaishankar’s answer.
Walter Ladwig, a South Asia security expert at King’s College London, said carrying relatively small quantities of war material would be useful for Delhi from a geopolitical perspective.
“This will give India an opportunity to show the West that it is not ‘on Russia’s side’ in the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” he said, adding that Moscow has no influence on Delhi’s decision.
