On the Russian side, the meeting was attended by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Deputy Prime Minister and Chair of the Russian side of the Intergovernmental Russian-Indian Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technical and Cultural Cooperation Denis Manturov and Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov.
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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Minister, dear friends,
I am very happy to see you in Moscow. I know you have a big programme and much work ahead on interaction with our country in both the Intergovernmental Commission and the Foreign Ministry. Everything is in your hands, and I must say we are doing a good job overall – judging by all, with your direct support.
Our trade is growing for the second year running and at a confident pace. This year, the growth rates were even higher than last year. I don’t remember how many percentage points it grew by last year, but we have already surpassed this figure in the nine months of this year. It is common knowledge that this is primarily energy resources – oil, oil products and coal, but it’s not just that. We are working together in high-tech areas, and we are very pleased to note that despite the current turbulences in the world, relations with our traditional friends in Asia, with India and the Indian people are making steady headway.
We know the position of Prime Minister Modi and have talked about this more than once. I am referring to his position, his attitude to complicated processes, including hot spots, the situation in Ukraine. I have repeatedly informed him about the situation around this conflict. I know about his striving to resolve this problem through peaceful means. Now we will talk about this in more detail and provide you with additional information. I know that our colleagues have certainly spoken about this, but nonetheless we will give you additional information on the situation.
And, of course, we will be happy to see our friend, Prime Minister Modi in Russia. We will have an opportunity to discuss the current issues and talk about the prospects for developing Russian-Indian relations. We have to cover a lot of ground.
So I would like to ask you to convey to him my best wishes and please, give him our invitation – we are looking forward to seeing him in Russia. That said, I realise that next year, India’s domestic political calendar is not simple. It is complicated considering that India will hold general elections to parliament. We wish success to our friends in India. We believe we will maintain our traditional friendly ties in any alignment of political forces.
Thank you very much.
Minister of External Affairs of India Subrahmanyam Jaishankar:
Thank you, Mr President.
First of all, please allow me to convey the personal greetings of Prime Minister Modi, and he has also, through me, sent a letter to you, a letter expressing his thoughts about the state of our cooperation and the progress that we have made in recent days, and I have the honour to give you the letter.
And certainly, Mr President, he looks forward to visiting Russia next year, and I am sure that we will find a date which is mutually convenient for the political calendar of both countries. So it is certainly something that he looks forward to.
I would also, Excellency, like to take the opportunity to share with you some aspects of the progress that we have made, and in the last two days, had a chance to discuss it with Deputy Prime Minister Manturov and also today with Foreign Minister Lavrov. And I would, like you, highlight the progress we have made in trade, which is in excess of a turnover of $50 billion. And we believe that this is something whose potential is now only beginning to be visible. It is important that we give it a more sustainable character, and we discussed how we should do that.
The second aspect pertains to the nuclear side, and we have yesterday signed agreements which would take the Kudankulam project forward.