File photo of a stealth frigate inducted from Russia in the past.

NEW DELHI: India and Russia on Tuesday inked a $500 million deal for design and transfer of technology for the construction of two guided-missile stealth frigates at the Goa Shipyard, in yet another indication that New Delhi will continue to have expansive defence collaboration with Moscow despite the threat of financial sanctions from Washington.

Defence ministry officials said the pact for construction of the two 4,000-tonne Grigorivich or Talwar-class frigates, which was inked between defence shipyard Goa Shipyard Ltd (GSL) and Russia's state-run defence export arm Rosoboronexport, is part of the umbrella agreement to acquire four such warships for the Indian Navy .

The defence ministry on October 23 had inked the over Rs 8,000 crore contract with Rosoboronexport for the first two frigates, which are lying half-constructed at the Russian Yantar Shipyard due to a cash-crunch and bilateral problems between Russia and Ukraine.

While the first two frigates will be imported from Russia, the other two will be built at GSL at an overall cost of around Rs 13,000 crore. India will separately acquire the Zorya gas-turbine engines to power the frigates -- four for each warship -- at a total cost of around Rs 1,000 crore from Ukraine, as was earlier reported by TOI.

GSL chief Rear Admiral Shekhar Mital (retd) told TOI that the construction of the two frigates at the defence shipyard will begin in 2020, with the first one being delivered in 2026 and the second a year later.

All the four frigates will be armed with the BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles, apart from other weapon systems and sensors. These four will add to the six such Russian stealth frigates, three Talwar-class and three Teg-class warships, already inducted into the Indian Navy from 2003-2004 onwards.

Despite the threat of sanctions under the new US law called CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act), which seeks to prevent countries from buying Russian weapons or Iranian oil, India had inked the $5.43 billion deal for S-400 Triumf air defence missile systems with Russia last month.

