Barely five months later, the new Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi visited the Soviet Union. Within a year, Russia delivered its first batch of T-54 tanks for the Indian Army, and the first submarine to its navy.
In August 1971, as things started heating up again with Pakistan, Indira Gandhi signed the Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union, which was probably one of the reasons for the US -– and China -- not to get involved in that war which ended in December with Pakistan's surrender of the east and the birth of Bangladesh.
The spate of high level visits to and from the Soviet Union continued, with Indira Gandhi visiting Moscow several times, and trips to India by Leonid Brezhnev twice between 1973 and 1980.
Photograph: Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Delhi Lieutenant Governor Jagmohan and Minister for External Affairs P V Narasimha Rao in New Delhi, December 1980. Photograph: Courtesy and copyright the Russian News and Information Agency, RIA Novosti. Used with permission.
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