MOSCOW, February 13. /TASS/. The contract between Russia and India inked 25 years ago for the supply of T-90 tanks brought Russia's domestic tank industry back to life, Alexander Nozdrachev, who served as General Director of the Russian Agency for Conventional Arms from 1999 to 2004, told TASS.
"Uralvagonzavod Group was under the agency's purview. Since it was one of the largest enterprises, it was one of the first I visited. The first thing I saw was that military equipment production had stopped. The plant survived by producing railway cars. Wages and taxes were on hold. The situation was becoming critical," Nozdrachev recalled. Uralvagonzavod CEO Nikolay Malykh reported on the state of affairs at the plant. He said that the plant had been contracted to repair only 30 armored vehicles for the year under the government procurement contract. This work takes only a few days."
According to Nozdrachev, the leadership of the Main Armored Vehicle Directorate of the Russian Defense Ministry explained that it only had enough funds to maintain its own repair plants, purchase batteries, and tires. A small amount of funding was allocated for research and development work on the Improvement-88 project (an advanced tank also known as Object 195, or T-95).
Nozdrachev said that, to keep the production facility from going completely under, Nikolay Malykh and Sergey Mayev, head of the Main Armored Vehicle Directorate of the Russian Defense Ministry, made a plan to sign a contract for the supply of tanks with the Indian Defense Ministry.
He recalled that in late 2000, the heads of the newly established Rosoboronexport state weapons exporting company, Andrey Belyaninov and Sergey Chemezov, managed to negotiate all the details of this contract with their Indian partners. As a result, in February 2001, two contracts were signed: one for the supply of T-90S vehicles, and the second for the supply of vehicle kits for the tanks’ subsequent assembly in India. In 2002, Rosoboronexport and Uralvagonzavod established a representative office in the Indian city of Avadi, where plant specialists were sent to train their Indian colleagues in tank assembly.
Nozdrachev believes that the signed contract essentially saved the domestic tank industry. "In 1999-2000, the Main Armored Vehicle Directorate of the Russian Defense Ministry had no funds to purchase tanks. Funds were allocated only for repairs and R&D work. The Kirov plant received nothing at all. The Omsk plant received pennies. "The T-80 project was put on hold," he recalled.