Meetings with Doval, Sitharaman, Jaishankar to boost energy, trade cooperation
New Delhi: First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, Denis Manturov, will visit New Delhi on Thursday for high-level talks with the Indian leadership amid ongoing energy cooperation between the two countries.
During the visit, he is scheduled to hold separate meetings with National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.
The visit follows the bilateral summit held in December last year during Vladimir Putin’s visit to India. Russian officials are expecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Russia later this year for the next summit.
In a parallel engagement, Secretary of the General Council of United Russia, Vladimir Yakushev, is also visiting India this week. He will meet Indian parliamentarians and Jaishankar to discuss inter-parliamentary, trade, economic and cultural cooperation.
The visit comes days after Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri held Foreign Office Consultations in New Delhi with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko, during which bilateral ties and regional and global issues were reviewed, including developments in West Asia.
Earlier, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said India deserves “deepest respect” for pursuing an independent foreign policy based on strategic autonomy.
In a virtual address to a conference on bilateral ties, Jaishankar said both countries aim to increase annual trade from $68.7 billion to $100 billion by 2030 in a balanced and sustainable manner.
