September 2024, media reported on India’s plans to sell most of its 2,400 T-72 tanks. The prospect raised concerns because of uncertainty about the intended customer and how New Delhi was going to coordinate the deal with russia — one of the traditional suppliers of weapons to the Indian market.
This topic has received a new development, as it transpired that India will buy engines for the tanks directly from russia, despite the risk of getting sanctioned by the West. According to Opex360, on March 7, 2025, India announced a $248 million contract with Rosoboronexport, a russian state arms export agency, for the supply of engines to equip the Indian T-72s.
Read more: India Wants to Restore its T-72 Tanks, and It Seems It Will Do Without russia
India wants 1,000-horsepower engines but the T-72's standard B-46 power plant can only put out 750 hp, Defense Express notes. Therefore, the engines in question are most likely the more powerful B-92S2 ones, commonly used with the T-90.
The terms of the contract offer not just the supply of ready-made russian engines but also the transfer of production technologies to defense company AVNL (Armoured Vehicles Nigam Limited) to establish local manufacturing in India.
The Opex360 journalists seem surprised that this deal received zero international reaction, particularly the fact that it didn't trigger any retaliation sanctions from Western countries.
Moreover, Defense Express would like to emphasize that it's a truly large-scale contract. To illustrate: in early 2024, the London-based think tank IISS estimated in The Military Balance 2024 study that the russian army had only 1,750 tanks, among them 950 were of the T-72 type in various modifications; meanwhile, the Indian army had 3,740 tanks, including 2,400 T-72s.
The acquisition of engines is associated with an earlier initiated program to restore the entire fleet to "near-zero hour, zero km state of operational readiness." Such a massive contract for T-72 engines for India will strengthen russia's tank industry capabilities and capacity to sustain the russian army in its war of aggression against Ukraine.
This, combined with February 2025 reports about India's interests in buying 3M54 Kalibr anti-ship missiles from russia, with no response from the West either, evolves into an alarming trend, where the russian military-industrial complex exploits its cooperation with India as a loophole to revitalize all its segments, strained by the ongoing war and international sanctions regime.
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