Top News

India's External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday. The External Affairs Minister conveyed good wishes to President Putin on behalf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to the statement issued by the Kremlin, during the meeting, President Putin said that Foreign Minister Jaishankar's visit shows the level of relations built over decades between Russia and India.

The two countries are working together in almost all areas including government relations, parliamentary relations and economic cooperation. Noting the increase in India-Russia trade turnover, he said, “I am happy to see that our trade turnover has increased this year.

“Last year it was down a bit, but this year it is increasing and part of that, and perhaps most of it, is because of Prime Minister Modi, who is paying personal attention to improving Russia-India relations.”

He said, “At the beginning of our conversation, I would like to ask you to convey my good wishes to Prime Minister Modi. I hope that we will meet him soon, as we had planned within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, very soon. Our schedule is such that we will probably be able to meet again this year.”

The Russian President said that External Affairs Minister Jaishankar and Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, who leads the Russian part of the intergovernmental commission, have already discussed the most urgent issues.

He said, “There are a lot of such issues. One of these issues is not just energy, it is, of course, fertilizer supply also. We are doing everything to solve this issue for Indian farmers, for farming. We are increasing these supplies and are ready to do so further and all the other issues to nuclear energy, cooperation in high-tech sector and other sectors, all these are on the agenda, and the increase is happening very fast.”

Foreign Minister Dr. Jaishankar began his address by saying, “First of all, I want to give you a loving greeting on behalf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has given me an instruction, a message, which I want to convey to you.”

He said, “This morning we had a meeting of our Intergovernmental Commission. I have a very good report to tell you about our economic cooperation, nuclear energy, fertilizers and so on. I will talk about it in detail. I would like to tell that our economic cooperation has increased a lot.”

Dr. Jaishankar further said that Prime Minister Modi looks forward to meeting you at the SCO Summit and also hopes that you will get the opportunity to attend the BRICS Summit and host this annual summit. We really have a strong bilateral cooperation and I thank you for this honour.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Denis Manturov, Russian President's aide Yuri Ushakov, Indian Ambassador to Russia Vinay Kumar and other officials were also present during the meeting.