India’s efforts to pare back a longstanding reliance on Russian military hardware is bearing fruit after the courting of new Western allies and a rapidly growing domestic arms industry, analysts say.

At a time when Moscow’s military-industrial complex is occupied with the ongoing war in Ukraine, India has made the modernization of its armed forces a top priority.

That urgency has risen in tandem with tensions between the world’s most populous nation and its northern neighbor China, especially since a deadly 2020 clash between their troops.

“India’s perception of its security environment vis-a-vis China has been dramatically altered,” Harsh V Pant, of the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation think-tank, told AFP.

Relations between the two neighbors went into freefall after the clash on their shared frontier, which killed 20 Indian and at least four Chinese soldiers.

“It has sort of shaken the system and there’s a realization that we have to do whatever is best now, and very fast,” Pant said of the incident.

India has become the world’s largest arms importer with purchases steadily rising to account for nearly 10 percent of all imports globally in 2019-23, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said last year.

More is in the pipeline, with orders worth tens of billions of dollars from the United States, France, Israel and Germany in coming years.

Modi will be in France next month where he is expected to sign deals worth about $10 billion for Rafale fighter jets and Scorpene-class submarines, Indian media reports say.

Defense minister Rajnath Singh has also promised at least $100 billion in fresh domestic military hardware contracts by 2033 to spur local arms production.