The Admiral Gorshkov is not a good buy at $3.5 Billion. As the article points out a brand new carrier of the same size, with a complete set of blue prints can be had for $4 billion. With the current economic climate they could probably even get a better price.    In maintenance terms the Gorshkov would probably be the equivalent of the De Gaulle ? a ship of the damned.

In case anybody has not noticed there is a global economic slowdown. Many countries are in no position to maintain current levels of defense spending much less increase it. Even Russia has to reconsider it projected spending due to depressed oil prices. Add to it a new administration/congress in the US that is less defense friendly and you can expect defense contractors to be cutting some good deals due to less demand. Russian is acting like India has no other options when they have plenty.

 India could do the following:   Dump the Gorshkov they may or may not get their money back but they can buy a better. Plenty of shipyards are going to be looking for work. Of course there is time factor but realistically they may never get the Russian POS.

 They may be able to even get in on an even larger carrier. Since France looks like they are going to stick with one carrier they might get in on buying a third ship of the new British carrier class. Until that ship gets built they might buy or lease a retired LPD/LHA type ship and procure some new Harriers to give them some force projection capabilities. The money for that could come from cancelling other weapons orders with Russia.