Team Blitz India
SERIOUS messages” will come out of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Moscow next week and relations between the two countries will “blossom further”, Russia’s Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia said recently. “We have relations of special privilege, strategic partnership with India, longtime friend of Russia,” he said, speaking to reporters after his country assumed the presidency of the Security Council for this month.
Joint documents
“There will be substantive conversations on the whole range of issues that our countries cooperate on” and “there will be serious messages coming out of it and I presume in the form of joint documents,” he added.
“I expect Russian-Indian relations to blossom even better,” he said. The visit announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov is expected next week and has special significance as it will be Prime Minister Modi’s first foreign trip after his election for a third term. There have been no high-level bilateral visits between the two countries since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Modi last visited Russia in 2019 when he attended the fifth Eastern Economic Forum Summit in Vladivostok. The last official visit to Moscow was in 2015. Putin’s last visit to India was in 2021, but he skipped the G20 Summit presided over by Modi last year in New Delhi.
India has continued pushing for a diplomatic solution to end the Ukraine war. Modi has also been in contact with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Defying the West, New Delhi has continued economic and defence ties with Moscow, particularly in energy.
Asked about former US President Donald Trump’s claim that he would be able to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, Nebenzia said, “The Ukrainian crisis cannot be solved in one day.”
Logistics supply pact
The two leaders are expected to discuss a range of issues, according to Indian officials familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as the discussions are private. The agenda includes a logistics supply agreement to bolster cooperation between the two militaries, restarting discussions on the joint development of a fifth generation fighter aircraft, and collaboration on nuclear power, the people said.
