PM Modi's visit fits perfectly into Russia's strategic foreign policy, Says Sergey Lavrov

NEW DELHI: Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov affirmed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's upcoming Moscow visit perfectly fits into his country's "strategic foreign policy line" and batted for trade in national currencies, which he said now accounts for 60% of the total bilateral trade.

"PM Narendra Modi's visit perfectly fits into our strategic foreign policy line. India is one of our priority partners, and our relationship is qualified accordingly in official bilateral documents," Lavrov said on Wednesday at the Primakov Readings, Russia's premier foreign policy forum.

"Initially documented as a strategic partnership, it was later redefined as a privileged strategic partnership in response to our Indian friends' proposal.


Later still, also at New Delhi's initiative, bilateral relations have been elevated to the level of a special and privileged strategic partnership. We would like this term, this formula to continue to describe the essence of our joint work and interaction."

Modi is scheduled to visit Moscow in the second week of July for the annual bilateral summit, which will focus on defence, energy, trade and connectivity partnership. The Russian foreign minister also batted for Russia-India-China (RIC) partnership. "Yevgeny Primakov promoted the idea of multipolarity and created the Russia-India-China troika. It does not meet often, but we are planning to hold an RIC conference. RIC is the progenitor of Brics... It was actually Yevgeny Primakov's idea that the Russia, India and China triangle should become the symbol of the multipolar world, and its core," he said.

RIC leaders have not met since Covid-19 and the Galwan clash between Indian and Chinese forces in June 2020 led to a chill in bilateral ties.

RIC was considered a confidence building measure in India-China ties which brought leaders of the two sides together in a small format, unlike other platforms.

Referring to Brics, Lavrov said, "I would like to draw attention to the fact that the Brics is expanding, enjoying more and more authority and appeal on the part of the world's majority countries. With the accession of five members, our aggregate potential has substantially increased. When discussing the world's economic problems in the G20, we are ready to solve them on the basis of the specific real weight that the G7 has, on the one hand, and the Brics countries on the other."

Russia is the current Brics chair and the summit will be held in Kazan in October.