• Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar met President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin.

• Putin invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Russia next year.

• The ties between India and Russia remained strong notwithstanding Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. India has not yet condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and it has been maintaining that the crisis must be resolved through diplomacy and dialogue.

• India’s import of Russian crude oil has gone up significantly despite increasing disquiet over it in many Western countries.

• Jaishankar, who is on a five-day official visit to Russia, earlier met with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.

• India-Russia relations reflect geopolitical realities, strategic convergence and mutual benefit, Jaishankar said as he held a wide-ranging meeting with Lavrov in Moscow.

• Both ministers also exchanged views on the Indo-Pacific region, the Ukraine conflict, the Gaza situation, Afghanistan and Central Asia, BRICS, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, G20 and UN-related matters.

• Jaishankar also held a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov on the bilateral economic cooperation during which they witnessed the signing of some important agreements related to the construction of the future power-generating units of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu.

• The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP), India’s largest, is being built in Tamil Nadu with the technical assistance of Russia. The construction began in March 2002. Since February 2016, the first power unit of the KNPP has been steadily operating at its design capacity of 1,000 MW. The plant is expected to start operating at full capacity in 2027.

India-Russia relations

• On April 3, 1947 India and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations.

• Russia has been a longstanding and time-tested partner for India.

• Development of India-Russia relations has been a key pillar of India’s foreign policy. Since the signing of the ‘Declaration on the India-Russia Strategic Partnership’ in October 2000, India-Russia ties have acquired a qualitatively new character with enhanced levels of cooperation in almost all areas, including political, security, defence, trade and economy, science & technology, culture, and people-to-people ties.

• In December 2010, the ‘Strategic Partnership’ was elevated to the level of a ‘Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership’.

• The annual summit between the Prime Minister of India and the President of the Russian Federation is the highest institutionalised dialogue mechanism in the strategic partnership between India and Russia.

• So far, 21 annual summits have taken place alternatively in India and Russia. The last summit took place in New Delhi in December 2021.

• The primary mechanism at the government level for enhancing trade and economic cooperation is the India-Russia Intergovernmental Commission for Trade, Economic, Scientific & Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC).

• India-Russia Strategic Economic Dialogue (IRSED) is another government to government mechanism.

• Intensifying the trade and economic relations has been identified as a priority area by both sides, as is clear by the revised targets of increasing bilateral investment to $50 billion and bilateral trade to $30 billion by 2025.

• Bilateral trade during FY 2021-22 amounted to $13.2 billion. Indian exports amounted to $3.26 billion, while imports from Russia amounted to $9.86 billion.

• Major items of export from India include electrical machinery, pharmaceuticals, machinery and mechanical appliances, organic chemicals, iron & steel, while major items of import from Russia include oil and petroleum products, fertilisers, mineral resources, precious stones and metals, vegetable oils, etc. 

• The major bilateral investments by Russia in India are in the oil and gas, petrochemicals, banking, railways and steel sectors, while Indian investments in Russia are mainly in oil and gas and pharmaceuticals sectors.

• India has longstanding and wide-ranging cooperation with Russia in the field of defence. India-Russia military technical cooperation has evolved from a buyer-seller framework to one involving joint research, development and production of advanced defence technologies and systems.

• Defence cooperation is guided by the Agreement on the Programme for Military Technical Cooperation signed between the two countries. The agreement for 2021-2031 was signed during the inaugural meeting of India-Russia 2+2 Dialogue which was held in Delhi in December 2021.

• Russia is an important partner for India in the area of peaceful use of nuclear energy. Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KNPP) is a flagship project between India and Russia in this sphere. KNPP Units 1 & 2 have already become operational and construction of Units 3 & 4 and 5 & 6 is going on.

• India-Russia cooperation in the field of peaceful uses of outer space dates back to about four decades. The two countries are cooperating closely under India’s first human spaceflight programme Gaganyaan.

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