Narendra Modi will visit Russia on 8 and 9 July and hold talks with Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin has said, in the Indian prime minister’s first trip to the country since it invaded Ukraine.
Modi and Putin will discuss “prospects for further development of traditionally friendly Russian-Indian relations, as well as relevant issues on the international and regional agenda,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
Modi, who was re-elected for a third term in June, last visited Moscow in 2015. He has met Putin several times since at international summits and the leaders have spoken often by phone.
Monday’s trip is expected to reaffirm the longstanding ties between the two countries, which date back to the cold war. Russia remains one of India’s most important trading partners, particularly on weapons and defence.
India’s ministry of external affairs said that the two leaders would “review the entire range of multifaceted relations between the two countries and exchange views on contemporary regional and global issues of mutual interest”. The summit is scheduled for 9 July.
Delhi’s importance as a key trading partner for Moscow has grown since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. India and China have become key buyers of Russian oil after sanctions imposed by the US and its allies that shut most western markets for Russian exports.
Under Modi’s leadership, India has avoided condemning Russia’s action in Ukraine while emphasising the need for a peaceful settlement.
The partnership between Moscow and Delhi has become fraught, however, since Russia started developing closer ties with India’s main rival, China, because of the hostilities in Ukraine. Modi on Thursday skipped the summit of a security grouping created by Moscow and Beijing to counter western alliances.
Modi sent his foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) at its annual meeting in the Kazakhstan capital, Astana, which was also attended by Putin and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
Jaishankar said he had raised the issue of the number of Indian nationals caught up in the frontlines of the war in Ukraine with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, after at least two Indians coerced into fighting for the Russian army were killed.
Modi’s increasingly close relationship to the US has also tested relations with Russia. On Thursday, the US ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, said his country was in continuous communications with India about working together to hold Russia “to account”.
Modi last visited Russia in 2019 for an economic forum in the far eastern port of Vladivostok. Putin last met Modi in September 2022 at a summit of the SCO in Uzbekistan. In 2021, Putin also travelled to Delhi and held talks with the Indian leader.
In the early 1990s, the Soviet Union was the source of about 70% of Indian army weapons, 80% of its air force systems and 85% of its navy platforms. But with the Russian supply line hit by the fighting in Ukraine, India has been reducing its dependency on Russian arms and diversifying its defence procurements, buying more from the US, Israel, France and Italy.
