Multiple Adversaries: India faced coordinated support for Pakistan from China and Turkey during Operation Sindoor.
Chinese Involvement: China supplied intelligence in real-time and used the conflict to test its weapons in Pakistani hands.
Prepared Retaliation: Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire partly because India was readying a larger strike that could have caused severe damage.
India confronted not just Pakistan but also significant support from China and Turkey during the four-day conflict under Operation Sindoor earlier this year, a senior military official revealed on Friday. Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh, Deputy Chief of Army Staff (Capability Development and Sustenance), said China leveraged the confrontation as a live testing ground for its military hardware supplied to Pakistan, effectively using Islamabad as a proxy to advance its strategic interests against New Delhi.
“China provided real-time intelligence on Indian troop and weapon deployments,” Singh said at a conference on New Age Military Technologies organised by FICCI, highlighting Beijing’s tactic of “killing with a borrowed knife.”
Operation Sindoor was launched in the early hours of May 7 in retaliation for the Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 civilians. India carried out strikes on nine terror and military installations across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), triggering the most intense military exchange between the two nuclear-armed neighbours in decades. The clash involved fighter jets, missiles, drones, long-range artillery, and heavy weaponry, ending only after a mutual ceasefire was agreed on May 10.
Singh explained that Pakistan sued for peace because Indian forces were preparing a much larger offensive that could have severely degraded Pakistan’s capabilities. This marks the first official acknowledgment that India had a more extensive military response planned, potentially involving the Navy.
He also underlined the scale of external support: “Pakistan was the visible face, but there were actually three adversaries. China provided all possible support, and Turkey also played a critical role,” Singh said. According to Indian military assessments, 81% of Pakistan’s military equipment over the past five years has been sourced from China, underscoring Beijing’s deep strategic investment in bolstering Pakistan’s military capacity against India.
(This story is published from a syndicated feed)