Russian President Vladimir Putin will have a close dinner with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his two-day working visit to Moscow. This visit will be the 22nd India-Russia Annual Summit at Putin’s invitation. The PM entering Russia will also meet the Indian community in Russia and the Kremlin the next day.

Stressing the importance of this visit, Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra also underlined the continuing conversation between the two leaders since the informal meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, held in 2022. ”The 21st annual summit took place in New Delhi in December 2021. Subsequently, the leaders met face-to-face again in September 2022 at Samarkand on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Uzbekistan. They have also continuously spoken over phone frequently in the past,” as stated by Mr Kwatra.

The Prime Minister has the first channel meeting with President Putin, and after that, the delegations meet. Sophisticated talks will include a detailed analysis of the historical volume of the bilateral relations between India and Russia. These may entail defence relations, commerce and investment, energy, and people-to-people relations. The two leaders hope to identify new trajectories of cooperation, thus fortifying the strategic cooperation between the two states.

Furthermore, PM Modi also met the Indian diaspora in Russia and gave them a message to establish a further bond between India and its NRIs. This writing underlines that such engagements have become typical for PM Modi’s foreign tours and are illustrative of his government’s concern with engaging Indian citizens residing in foreign countries.

Botheringly, it has provoked some negative reactions at home, though the visit has been successful. The senior Indian politician Jairam Ramesh took to Twitter to comment on the Prime Minister’s trip to Russia by saying that while manipulation is critical, PM Modi has not visited Manipur after a severe crisis that had taken place during the previous year. This, Ramesh wanted us to understand, means PM Modi has also not met the CM and the MLAs of his own BJP in Manipur, which means that India’s premier is seen as neglecting domestic issues.

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