‘We’ll do what’s in our national interest’: Indian FM to Pompeo on buying S-400s from Russia

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar made his comments while responding to a question about the S-400 at a presser with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during his visit to New Delhi.

We have relationships with several countries, many of which are of some standing. They have a history. We will do what is in our national interest.

Earlier reports said that India planned a push to convince Pompeo to grant New Delhi a waiver on purchasing the S-400s without the risk of violating the US sanctions, placed on Moscow. Without the waiver, India may be targeted under the 2017 US law, known as CAATSA (Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act ), which bans doing certain types of business with Russia.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin signed the $5 billion defense contract in October. US officials tried to dissuade India from acquiring the state-of-the-art Russian missile defense systems, warning that buying weapons from Moscow can impact future arms deals with Washington. The Pentagon also promised to offer India “potential alternatives” to the S-400s.

India, however, has always maintained that the deal with Russia is of strategic importance, and highlighted the long history of successful defense partnership the nations share.

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Mike Pompeo, for his part, hailed US-India relations, adding that “great friends are bound to have differences.”

India is not the only country Washington has tried to discourage from purchasing the S-400s from Russia in recent years. The US tried to make its NATO ally Turkey scrap a similar deal but Ankara refused.