UK and India agreed on Friday to strengthen defence and business cooperation during Boris Johnson’s visit to New Delhi, where he said a bilateral free trade deal could be completed by October. On his first visit to the Indian capital as British prime minister, Johnson discussed with Prime Minister Narendra Modi ways to strengthen security ties with India, where more than half of India’s military hardware comes from Russia.

However, the Indian foreign minister said Johnson was not pressuring Modi over New Delhi’s stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Prime Minister Johnson shared his view, and Prime Minister Modi shared our view – that the Russian-Ukrainian war should end immediately,” Harsh Vardhan Shringla told reporters. “There is no pressure.”

India abstained in a UN vote condemning the invasion of Ukraine and, unlike Britain and other Western nations, has not imposed sanctions on Moscow, which has called Russia’s actions in Ukraine a “special military operation.”
Johnson said after the meeting with Modi that India was unlikely to end its longstanding relationship with Russia.

“Indians have historically been known for their stance on Russia. They won’t change that, of course, it’s true,” he told a news conference on the last day of his two-day trip. “But they can see what’s going on and are increasingly interested in doing more with the UK.”

Johnson, under political pressure at home for breaking his own lockdown rules during the pandemic, said negotiators from the two countries are expected to finalise a free trade deal by the end of the year. “We tell our negotiators to get this done by Diwali in October. This could double our trade and investment by the end of the century,” he said.

Johnson said the UK would support India’s goal of building its fighter jets to reduce imports of expensive military equipment. India now has a mix of Russian, British and French fighter jets.