Jaishankar set to visit Moscow with focus on economic cooperation
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is set to visit Moscow next week amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Economic cooperation between India and Russia in various domains is likely to figure prominently in his talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Minister of Trade and Industry Denis Manturov, who is also the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday confirmed that Jaishankar will visit Russia on November 7 and 8 and hold talks with Lavrov and Manturov. Russia announced Jaishankar’s visit last week.
“The External Affairs Minister will meet his counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia. Discussions are expected to cover the entire range of bilateral issues, as well as exchange of views on various regional and international developments,” MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said at a media briefing.
“Continuation of regular dialogue”
He said “issues pertaining to bilateral economic cooperation in various domains” would figure in the Jaishankar-Manturov talks. “The External Affairs Minister will also meet Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation and Minister of Trade and Industry Denis Manturov, his counterpart for the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC),” Bagchi said.
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He added that the visit would be in continuation of the regular high-level dialogue between the two sides.
Asked about Russia agreeing to re-join a UN-backed agreement to allow the export of grain from Ukraine via a Black Sea corridor, Bagchi did not give a direct reply. He said any effort to address the global food security challenge would be welcome.
“We have been talking about the impact of the high prices of fertilisers, food, and energy affecting countries around the world, particularly the developing world, and anything that helps that process by increasing the availability and reducing the cost of food, etc., is a welcome development,” he said.
“I do not have a specific comment on the grain deal as such because we are not directly involved in it. But we have seen reports that the resumption has happened,” Bagchi added.
Fourth Jaishankar-Lavrov meet since Feb
Jaishankar last visited Russia in July 2021, which was followed by a visit to India by Lavrov in April. In the last few months, India has increased the import of discounted crude oil from Russia, notwithstanding the increasing disquiet over it by several Western powers.
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Jaishankar and Lavrov have already met four times since the Ukraine conflict began in February. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India in December last year to attend the India-Russia annual summit.
Russia has been a time-tested partner for India and a key pillar of New Delhi’s foreign policy. Both the countries have a mechanism under which India’s Prime Minister and the Russian President hold a summit meeting annually to review the entire gamut of ties. It is the turn of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to travel to Russia for this year’s summit. However, there is no clarity yet on the summit this year.
“India ready to contribute to peace efforts”
Since the Ukraine conflict began in February, Modi has spoken to Putin, as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, several times. In a phone conversation with Zelenskyy on October 4, Modi said there could be “no military solution” and that India was ready to contribute to any peace efforts.
At a bilateral meeting with Putin in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on September 16, Modi told him that “today’s era is not of war.”
India has not yet condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has been maintaining that the crisis must be resolved through diplomacy and dialogue.
There has been an escalation in hostilities between Russia and Ukraine recently, with Moscow carrying out retaliatory missile strikes targeting various Ukrainian cities in response to a huge blast in Crimea nearly two weeks ago. Moscow blamed Kyiv for the blast.
(With agency inputs)
