Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves for the visit to Russia on Wednesday afternoon, f0oreign secretary S.
Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves for the visit to Russia on Wednesday afternoon, f0oreign secretary S. Jaishankar on Tuesday said that India’s bilateral ties with the US and Russia’s ties with Pakistan should “not be seen as a zero sum game” and that it was “not a great positional shift”. He was responding to a question on whether India was aware of Russian concerns regarding the strengthening of strategic ties between India and US.
President Putin will host a private dinner for PM Modi on Wednesday evening. After formal talks on Thursday morning, the two “time-tested” partners are likely to ink a number of pacts in a range of sectors including nuclear energy and defence.
“We expect to sign a number of agreements covering a very broad range of fields. Final touches are being given on some of them,” Mr. Jaishankar told reporters.
The two leaders will also interact with a group of Indian and Russian CEOs at the Kremlin on Thursday. The PM’s engagement in Moscow will also include addressing a gathering of “Friends of India” in Moscow on Thursday evening and about 3,000 people are expected to attend the event. He will also visit Russia’s EMERCOM facility which deals with disaster management.
“Russia has been a very major military and strategic partner of India. There will be a lot of discussions on that,” Mr Jaishankar said. Last week, the MoD’s Defence Acquisition Council had cleared the purchase of Russian S-400 Triumf air defence missile systems at an estimated cost of '40,000 crore.
Asked whether India was supplying three Mi 25 helicopters to Afghanistan through Russia, the Foreign Secretary said “Technically these were not Russian acquisitions. What you are referring to, I assume anything that we would look at with any country would be something which we would look at from our resources.”
India is likely to offer a site in Andhra Pradesh to set up units five and six of the Kudankulam nuclear power plant by Russia in sync with broad principles of Make in India initiative. The two countries are likely to sign an agreement for the two units with provisions for involvement of India’s private sector in the project including in supply of various components.
