Russian Su-57 or US-made F-35? BIG update on which 5th-gen fighter jet India will purchase; Report says talks underway between...
India is rapidly seeking to acquire a 5th-generation stealth fighter jet, especially since Pakistan has already announced that it's air force will receive a fleet of 5th-gen J-35 fighters from China. While Pakistan is restricted to most of its arms imports from China, India has two options with regards to purchasing a next-gen fighter aircraft– the Sukhoi Su-57E from Russia, or the US-made F-35A. India, Russia talks underway on possible Su-57E deal?
Though no official announcement has been made, a report has claimed that talks are underway between India and Russia regarding the purchase of Su-57E stealth fighter jet. The report by the Defense Security Asia website, which has created a stir among defense analysts and strategic circles, stated that India wants indigenous integration and technology as part of the Su-57 deal with Russia, which will enable the country to indigenously manufacture 5th-gen fighters in the coming future. India wants indigenous radar in Su-57E
As per the report, India wants Russia to replace several main systems, especially the radar, of the Su-57E with Indian-made parts. But India's demand has created concern and dissatisfaction in Russian defense department.
India claims that the Russian N036 'Byelka' AESA radar used in the Su-57E, does not meet the requirements of a 5th-generation stealth aircraft, as its not jamming-proofs, and faces issues in areas like long-range detection and energy saving. India wants Byelka AESA radar on the Su-57E to be replaced with its indigenously-developed Uttam and Virupaksha AESA radars, which are Gallium Nitride (GaN) based, while their Russian counterpart used the older gallium arsenide (GaAs) technology.
According to Indian experts, Indian-made radars provide better heat control, accurate signal capture capability and high jamming resistance, which is extremely important in modern warfare. F-35A or Su-57, which 5th-gen fighter will India buy?
Earlier this year, during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the United States, US President Donald Trump had offered to sell the 5th-generation F-35 stealth fighter jet to India.
Shortly after the announcement, news broke that Russia, New Delhi's trusted defence partner and top weapons supplier, has offered an even more enticing deal on the Sukhoi Su-57 fighter jet, offering to sell the 5th-gen fighter to India as well as an assured transfer of technology, something which the US is unwilling to do.
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Hindustan Times
29 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Just as Russia's Most-Famous Dissident Seemed Set to Go Free, Tragedy Struck
Roger Carstens was rushing across Tel Aviv to meet Roman Abramovich, knowing he would have to ask the White House for forgiveness rather than permission. Twice before, the Biden administration had turned down requests by the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs to meet this enigmatic Russian oligarch, one of the handful of people Carstens considered a 'back channel wizard' with the influence to untangle the thorniest diplomatic knots. But in November 2023, when Carstens traveled to Israel to help American families whose loved ones Hamas had taken hostage, a message reached his phone saying Abramovich was also in town. It seemed like an unmissable chance to advance a prisoner swap that could free U.S. citizens jailed in Russia—and at the same time, rescue Vladimir Putin's archnemesis, the Russian dissident leader Alexei Navalny. The hostage envoy had been on the ground in six wars but joked the most combat he'd ever seen was wearing a suit and tie in Washington, 'trying to get anything done.' He had a plan to free Navalny and the Americans but the White House didn't think the time was right to move on it. He often joked that he felt like Gulliver, tied down by Lilliputians. His perceived adversaries: senior White House and State Department officials who had been working, albeit more cautiously, toward the same end, and were weighing the geopolitical and moral risks of trading prisoners with Putin. Carstens complained to colleagues he was stuck reporting to decision makers who, in his view, had never been to combat, never smelled cordite and who sat at their desks, offering reasons why his proposals wouldn't work. This time, the former Green Beret wasn't going to give anyone enough time to tell him no. On Nov. 30, he shot off an email to Washington, where the day was still young, saying he was poised to sit with Abramovich. Minutes later, he walked into a hotel chosen for the meeting. Sitting opposite, the billionaire said he could see prisoner talks—between the Central Intelligence Agency and Russia's FSB spy service—were stalled. 'I'm not sure the FSB is passing on our messages,' Carstens said. He reiterated the latest offer from the White House: a mix of prisoners that included neither Navalny—whom Germany wanted—nor Russia's own must-have, an FSB officer named Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence for murdering a Putin opponent in downtown Berlin. Carstens felt that proposal was never going to fly. 'But let me run another idea by you,' he ventured, 'Not officially, but just to get your view.' Carstens pitched an idea he called 'enlarging the problem.' Germany would free Krasikov, if Russia freed Navalny. As an add-on, the U.S. and European allies could return various deep-cover sleeper spies in their possession, and Russia would release two Americans held on espionage charges the U.S. government strongly denied: former Marine Paul Whelan, and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. It sounded intriguing, Abramovich said, but added that he couldn't imagine Putin would free Navalny. After 30 minutes, Carstens left, reopening his phone to see cascading messages ordering him not to hold the meeting. A few days later, Carstens heard back from Abramovich, who seemed as surprised as anybody. Putin, he said, was willing to free Navalny. That same week, guards bundled the 47-year-old dissident onto a prison train and locked the door with no word of where he was heading. Hours turned to days as Navalny read the books he'd been allowed to take from the IK-6 prison camp. He couldn't see the towns passing outside, but the train was snaking across the Ural Mountains, then north toward the Arctic Circle to the 'dead railway,' built by political prisoners under Stalin. It took two weeks to reach his ice-covered destination, known as 'Polar Wolf.' 'I am your new Santa Claus,' he wrote in his first letter home to his wife, Yulia. 'Unfortunately, there are no reindeer, but there are huge, fluffy and very beautiful German shepherds.' A few weeks after he arrived, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz logged on to a private videoconference with Joe Biden, officially to discuss the war in Ukraine. Unofficially, the prisoner trade was on the agenda. Hours earlier, the Journal's editor in chief, Emma Tucker, had met with Scholz's top aides in Switzerland. Biden had just met Paul Whelan's sister, Elizabeth, a portrait painter who struck up an easy rapport with the president. Sullivan had been in constant contact with his opposite number in Berlin ahead of the meeting. The idea was so delicate Scholz was too nervous to mention specifics over the call. 'I will fly to see you,' Scholz said. 'I would be happy to.' The chancellor traveled without telling his own cabinet, giving such short notice that the only plane the German government could book was a medium-haul Airbus A321, which had to refuel in Iceland. There were no aides and no note-takers in the Feb. 9 meeting, just Biden and Scholz. Hours earlier, Tucker Carlson aired an interview with Putin at the Kremlin, where the former Fox host pushed the Russian president to release Gershkovich. Putin, chastened by Carlson, looked embarrassed. The pieces all seemed to be clicking into place. In the Oval Office, Scholz agreed to free the assassin Krasikov as the centerpiece of a broader deal. The chancellor would rescue Navalny from his Arctic prison—and, he hoped, boost the aging U.S. president's chances in what was certain to be a bruising re-election campaign. 'For you, I will do this,' Scholz told Biden. Black motorcades On Feb. 15, 2024, the narrow streets of Munich were lined with black motorcades delivering the West's most important leaders to the Bavarian city's annual security conference. Carstens wasn't registered as a speaker or panelist, but he quietly slipped out of Washington on a red-eye flight bound for Germany. By now, the administration was accelerating the Navalny trade toward completion, but preferred to keep Carstens on the periphery of any Russia prisoner talks. Christo Grozev was already there, waiting anxiously in a cafe close to the venue's security perimeter. The Bulgarian investigative journalist and spy-hunter felt the deal was almost done, yet he and Carstens wanted to be as close as possible to the West's top security officials to spot-check that nothing would derail it. Odessa Rae, the 'Navalny' film producer, was texting from Dubai in route to Ukraine after meeting their Russian contact, Stanislav Petlinsky. Vice President Kamala Harris was flying in on Air Force Two, officially to deliver a keynote address, while more quietly representing Biden at a meeting with Slovenian leaders to confirm the trade could include two Russian sleeper spies in their custody: a married couple posing as Argentine nationals. Germany's foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, was at the conference, and still uneasy about the moral line her country was inching toward, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to meet her and soothe any concerns. Navalny's wife, Yulia, was also in Munich, on hand to address lingering doubts. Next to Grozev, messaging contacts to try to piece together the state of play, was Maria Pevchikh, Navalny's friend and head of investigations. Their location felt ominous. Seventeen years earlier, at the same Munich gathering, Russia's president delivered a speech castigating the world order in which America was 'one master, one sovereign,' a diatribe considered the starting gun of his war against the West. Now, within touching distance of the biggest East-West prisoner swap since the Soviet collapse, the memory of that speech was like a specter. As the evening wrapped toward a close, Pevchikh raised a question, like a terrible premonition: 'What if they kill him?' After years studying Russian intelligence services, Grozev was confident her concern wouldn't come to pass. There was a protocol, he reassured her, a methodology for prison swaps upheld since the Cold War. The Journal even had prewritten articles, ready to go, the moment Navalny walked free. The next day, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray was sitting down for lunch with the chiefs of Britain's MI6 and Germany's BND intelligence agency. Their discreet and thankless work was about to pay off in the very real gift of freedom not only for Navalny but also for Gershkovich, whose reporting Wray admired. But as the meal unfolded, dignitaries began reaching for their phones, buzzing with news from Russia. The most powerful security czars in the Western alliance turned to each other in horror and bewilderment. 'Alexei Navalny has died in prison,' the Kremlin's state newswire announced. 'The cause of death is being established.' The guests rose one by one to start fielding calls. Wray rushed upstairs to confer with Blinken. America's top diplomat immediately shot back: 'Get me Yulia.' An aide struggled to reach Navalny's wife and came back with the number for Grozev. Weaving through the tightly controlled security cordons, European and American officials were scrambling to find each other and confer on what would happen next. The news spread through the hallways and coffee line where a German diplomat blurted out in full earshot of reporters, 'Oh no! We were working on getting him out!' Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, reacts as she speaks during the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 16, 2024. Grozev guided Navalny's ashen-faced widow through the hotel gates to the secretary of state's suite. The two embraced, then sat down, and Yulia delivered a powerful message: Putin must be punished for the misery he has wrought. Minutes later she walked down toward the lectern in the shellshocked conference hall with delegates standing to applaud, or crying in their seats, her eyes filled with tears and righteous anger. 'I want Putin, his entourage, Putin's friends, and his government to know they will pay for what they have done to our country, to our family, and my husband,' she said. Chancellor Scholz wanted to see Yulia but wasn't sure if the woman who had minutes earlier discovered she was a widow would want time with her family. 'I want to meet,' she responded and arrived, somehow still composed, in the hotel suite where the chancellor was waiting. 'I have one request,' Yulia said, before turning to the question of Krasikov. 'Do not release that man.' Across the world, the secret club of people who had labored at organizing an exchange were reeling as its one necessary component was lying dead in an Arctic morgue. Officials across the West had worked for months to free not just Navalny but a growing list of Americans seized by the Kremlin as bargaining chips. CIA officers and their European partners had hunted down Russian spies undercover in an Arctic research institute, the front lines of Ukraine and the suburbs of an Alpine capital. The Justice Department had extradited Russian cybercriminals arrested in the Maldives and on a Swiss mountainside helipad—high-wire legal and diplomatic maneuvers that had given the U.S. trading stock for an exchange that was now on ice. In Los Angeles, Journal publisher Almar Latour was visiting a museum exhibit of art made by prisoners from Soviet gulags, and wondering if a dark gray pencil sketch was drawn in the same camp as Navalny, when his phone rang. It was Carstens, who had landed in Munich just in time to learn it was all for nought. The U.S. could have brought Navalny back alive if it had acted with more urgency, Carstens said. 'If only I had moved faster.' The special envoy was blaming himself for not putting more pressure on the White House. 'We could have wrapped this up in August!' Rae, on her way to Ukraine, was boarding a flight, talking to a fellow passenger about her film, neither of them aware until she glanced at her phone that its subject, her friend, had just died. In Russia's IK-17 labor camp, Paul Whelan was trading cigarettes to place a call to his family: 'If they are willing to kill Navalny they could do something to me. Poison me. Break my leg?' His sister Elizabeth was quizzing a case officer on Carstens's staff over text messages about the consequences of a death she was sure wasn't an accident. The IK-17 Penal Colony, where American Paul Whelan was transferred to serve a 16-year sentence on espionage charges he and the U.S. government denied. Recalibration Jake Sullivan was on his office sofa when a delegation from The Wall Street Journal stepped in. Their meeting, pre-scheduled, was meant to deliver good news, but word of Navalny's death, hours earlier, lent it the air of a wake. Sullivan had a habit of looking toward the floor, or to one side, as he carefully deliberated the angles of a problem. After a long pause, he spoke: 'I never thought a deal with Navalny would work.' But he also hadn't expected Putin to kill him, and still wasn't sure if he would ever know the truth behind the dissident's death. Navalny's supporters had lost everything—the man they were trying to save and Russia's dreams for a democratic future. And the Journal, whose reporter, Gershkovich, had now spent 323 days in the Moscow jail where Stalin's henchman once executed purged officials, was no closer to freeing him than in the first hours of his arrest. But in the cloud of grief and disorientation, the national security adviser could also glimpse a new possibility. Germany had crossed the psychological threshold of agreeing to free a murderer—and perhaps they would accept other political prisoners in Navalny's place. The question hanging over that analysis was whether Putin had come to the same fatal conclusion. In the weeks to come, CIA officials would fly to meet their Russian counterparts in Saudi hotels, booked under false names, carrying eyes-only hard-copy lists of prisoners the West could trade with the Kremlin. The world would finally see the fruits of their labor when, on Aug. 1, 2024 six planes delivered 24 prisoners and two children to an exchange point outside a Turkish air terminal, a mix of Russian spies, hackers, cybercriminals—and Krasikov—traded for Russian dissidents, German convicts, and Americans including Whelan, Gershkovich, and other journalists. That trade, the largest East-West swap in modern history, would cement a cold, inescapable fact about the emerging world order: taking and trading prisoners, and bending the justice system to do it, is now what powerful countries do, a transactional order of statecraft encapsulated by Navalny's arrest, the campaign to free him, and his tragic death. For now, however, looking up from his office couch, Sullivan engaged the Journal without offering false hope. The newspaper's lawyers had brought Gershkovich's mother, Ella Milman, and she was looking right at him, asking: 'Doesn't this create more urgency to free Evan?' 'It might,' he said. 'It's not a breaking point,' he added. 'We will get this done. I see a pathway.' Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson are leaders on The Wall Street Journal's World Enterprise Team. This piece is adapted from their new book, 'Swap: A Secret History of the New Cold War,' which will be published on Aug. 19 by HarperCollins (which, like the Journal, is owned by News Corp). Write to Drew Hinshaw at and Joe Parkinson at Just as Russia's Most-Famous Dissident Seemed Set to Go Free, Tragedy Struck
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First Post
30 minutes ago
- First Post
How India has become the world's smartphone making powerhouse
New data shows that New Delhi has surpassed Beijing as Washington's top supplier of smartphones. What made this possible? Apple shifting its operations to India in the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic and US President Donald Trump's tariff wars read more Data from research firm Canalys showed that India's smartphone shipments to the US increased by a whopping 240 per cent in the second quarter of 2025. Reuters India is now the United States' biggest supplier of smartphones. New data shows that New Delhi has surpassed Beijing as Washington's top supplier of smartphones. What made this possible? Apple shifting its operations to India in the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic and President Donald Trump's ongoing tariff wars. But what happened and why? How did India overtake China as the US' top supplier of smartphones? Let's take a closer look: What happened? Data from research firm Canalys showed that India's smartphone shipments to the US increased by a whopping 240 per cent in the second quarter of 2025. These phones now comprise around 44 per cent of all smartphones sent to the US. Last year, that figure was at just 13 per cent, Meanwhile, China's share of smartphones sent to the US declined to 25 per cent. This is a major shift from the second quarter of 2024, when China comprised 61 per cent of smartphones sent to the US. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Canalys analyst Sanyam Chaurasia said, 'India became the leading manufacturing hub for US-sold smartphones for the very first time in Q2 2025, largely driven by Apple's accelerated supply chain shift to India amid an uncertain trade landscape.' iPhone exports from the US to India hit a high in March – just before Trump announced the reciprocal tariffs on US trading partners. Trump has imposed a 50 per cent tariff on India, a 30 per cent tariff on China while the two countries negotiated trade deal and a 20 per cent tariff on Vietnam. India has exported over 24 million iPhones across the world in 2025 – 78 per cent of which have gone to the United States. India sent 21.3 million smartphones to the US between January and May 2025 – more than what it sent last year. India has exported over 24 million iPhones across the world in 2025 – 78 per cent of which have gone to the United States. Reuters Smartphone exports from India to the US have skyrocketed 182 per cent to $9.35 billion in 2025. Tamil Nadu, which houses Apple suppliers such as Foxconn, Pegatron, and Tata Electronics, is the hub of iPhone production in India. Apple is making its bas models such as the iPhone 16 and iPhone 15 in India. However, it is important to note that though the tech giant has begun assembling some iPhone Pro models in India, it remains dependent on China for its iPhone Pro models to the United States. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Samsung and Motorola have also increased sending handsets from India. However, they are doing so on a fast smaller scale than Apple. Chaurasia said Motorola, like Apple, had its core manufacturing base in China, while Samsung kept its in Vietnam. Incidentally Vietnam has also grown its share of the US market to 30 per cent. Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw confirmed the development on Sunday. Vaihnav added that electronics manufacturing in India is now estimated at Rs 12 lakh crore. Vaishnav, inaugurating metro projects in Bengaluru, said India's electronic production has increased six-fold over the past 11 years. He said electronic exports have surged eight-fold to Rs 3 lakh crore, which reinforced India's position as the world's second-largest mobile phone manufacturer. 'Our electronic production has grown six times in the last 11 years. Today, electronics manufacturing has touched Rs 12 lakh crore. Electronic exports have increased by eight times… Today, it has grown to Rs 3 lakh crore. India has become the second-largest manufacturer of mobile phones in the world," Vaishnaw said. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Government data shows that India had just two mobile manufacturing units in 2014 – that number is over 300 today. A decade ago, a mere 26 per cent of mobile phones sold in India were made locally. Today, 99.2 per cent of phones sold in India are made locally. The value of mobile phone manufacturing industry rose from Rs 18,900 crore in FY14 to Rs 4,22,000 crore in FY24. The Union Minster Jitin Prasada earlier told the Lok Sabha earlier that the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme meant for mobile phone manufacturing attracted a total investment of Rs 12,390 crore. 'The PLI Scheme for LSEM has already attracted a cumulative investment of INR 12,390 crore, led to a cumulative production of Rs 8,44,752 crore with exports of Rs 4,65,809 crore and generated additional employment of 1,30,330 (direct jobs) till Jun'25," the minister said. He said India's mobile import demand decreased by 0.02 per cent in 2024-25 from 75 per cent in 2014-15. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'PLI Scheme for Large Scale Electronics Manufacturing has significantly impacted the mobile manufacturing sector in India particularly in transforming India from a net importer to a net exporter of mobile phones. Bharat is now the second largest mobile manufacturing country in the world," the minister said. What do experts say? That US smartphone makers are clearly in the mood to diversify. Experts say that issues over tariffs and trade rules have resulted in vendors front-loading inventory – which means buying far more inventory than usual and changing their sourcing plans. India's increasing role as a manufacturing base for global smartphone brands shows it is becoming a bigger part of the phonemakers' plans for both low-cost and high-end models. However, it must be noted that the smartphone market in US increased just 1 per cent in the second quarter of 2025. In fact, iPhone shipments decreased 11 per cent from the previous year. However, Samsung's shipments increased by a massive 38 per cent. Motorola also saw a two per cent bump. The other popular models were Google and TCL. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD With inputs from agencies
Deccan Herald
30 minutes ago
- Deccan Herald
'No McDonald's and no Coca-Cola': In India, Trump's tariffs spark calls to boycott American goods
New Delhi: From McDonald's and Coca-Cola to Amazon and Apple, US-based multinationals are facing calls for a boycott in India as business executives and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's supporters stoke anti-American sentiment to protest against US the world's most populous nation, is a key market for American brands that have rapidly expanded to target a growing base of affluent consumers, many of whom remain infatuated with international labels seen as symbols of moving up in life. .About 55% of goods exported to US will face Trump tariff: for example, is the biggest market by users for Meta's WhatsApp and Domino's has more restaurants than any other brand in the country. Beverages like Pepsi and Coca-Cola often dominate store shelves, and people still queue up when a new Apple store opens or a Starbucks cafe doles out discounts. Although there was no immediate indication of sales being hit, there's a growing chorus both on social media and offline to buy local and ditch American products after Donald Trump imposed a 50 per cent tariff on goods from India, rattling exporters and damaging ties between New Delhi and Coca-Cola, Amazon and Apple did not immediately respond to Reuters Chowdhary, co-founder of India's Wow Skin Science, took to LinkedIn with a video message urging support for farmers and startups to make "Made in India" a "global obsession," and to learn from South Korea whose food and beauty products are famous worldwide.."We have lined up for products from thousands of miles away. We have proudly spent on brands that we don't own, while our own makers fight for attention in their own country," he Shastry, CEO of India's DriveU, which provides a car driver on call service, wrote on LinkedIn: "India should have its own home-grown Twitter/Google/YouTube/WhatsApp/FB -- like China has." To be fair, Indian retail companies give foreign brands like Starbucks stiff competition in the domestic market, but going global has been a challenge. Indian IT services firms, however, have become deeply entrenched in the global economy, with the likes of TCS and Infosys providing software solutions to clients world Sunday, Modi made a "special appeal" for becoming self-reliant, telling a gathering in Bengaluru that Indian technology companies made products for the world but "now is the time for us to give more priority to India's needs.".He did not name any drag my McPuff into as anti-American protests simmer, Tesla launched its second showroom in India in New Delhi, with Monday's opening attended by Indian commerce ministry officials and US embassy Swadeshi Jagran Manch group, which is linked to Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, took out small public rallies across India on Sunday, urging people to boycott American brands.."People are now looking at Indian products. It will take some time to fructify," Ashwani Mahajan, the group's co-convenor, told Reuters. "This is a call for nationalism, patriotism.".He also shared with Reuters a table his group is circulating on WhatsApp, listing Indian brands of bath soaps, toothpaste and cold drinks that people could choose over foreign social media, one of the group's campaigns is a graphic titled "Boycott foreign food chains", with logos of McDonald's and many other restaurant Uttar Pradesh, Rajat Gupta, 37, who was dining at a McDonald's in Lucknow on Monday, said he wasn't concerned about the tariff protests and simply enjoyed the 49-rupee ($0.55) coffee he considered good value for money.."Tariffs are a matter of diplomacy and my McPuff, coffee should not be dragged into it," he said.
