India is still very far from defending itself if Pakistan launches nuclear missiles says Russian nuclear expert

A Russian nuclear expert has claimed that in the event of a Pakistani nuclear strike, India may not be able to fully defend itself, even though it invests heavily in developing anti-ballistic missile systems.

Petr Topychkanov, who is a senior researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Centre's Non-Proliferation Programme, has said that even though India has large scale cooperation with Israel for the development of a ballistic missile defence system, and is trying to acquire S-400 defence systems from Russia, it is still "very far" from defending itself if Pakistan launches a missile.

"Even in 10 years and with the huge budgets that India plans to spend on the development of nuclear weapons and capabilities, it is difficult to imagine it will be able to defend its territory from possible strikes from Pakistan in case of conflict," Topychkanov was quoted as saying by the Dawn.

He also talked about India's candidature for the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), adding that the world will be cautious about India.

"The nuclear waiver given to Indian became a very important part of the lesson for the international community because Delhi did not give a lot in exchange, it didn't change policies and approaches," he said.

Talking about Russia's policy for strategic stability in South Asia, Topychkanov said that Moscow is interested in regional strategic stability, while being busy working on avoiding crisis in the area.

He added that even though Russia has a longstanding strategic partnership with India, India should know that it is developing relations with both Islamabad and New Delhi.

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