Modi, Putin talk space cooperation, G20 attendance in phone call

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will attend the G20 summit to be hosted by India, President Vladimir Putin conveyed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.

Putin called up Modi and conveyed his inability to attend the G20 summit in New Delhi on September 9 and 10, according to a spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India.

The prime minister expressed “understanding” for the decision of the Russian President and thanked him for his nation’s consistent support to all initiatives during India’s G20 presidency. “The two leaders agreed to remain in touch,” the MEA spokesperson stated.

Ever since Russia launched a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 25, 2022, the Russian President has rarely gone out of Moscow and avoided personally attending most of the multilateral or plurilateral events attended by the leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom and the rest of the West. He, however, attended the 2022 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit at Samarkand in Uzbekistan, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) summit in Armenia and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) at Astana in Kazakhstan.

Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, had on Friday told journalists in Moscow that the Russian President had no plan to travel to New Delhi to attend the G20 summit as “(Russia’s) main emphasis” was on the “special military operations” in Ukraine. Putin had not been able to personally convey to Modi his decision that day as the prime minister had been on a visit to Greece on his way back from Johannesburg where he had attended the BRICS summit hosted by President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa.

Putin had not travelled to Johannesburg to attend the BRICS summit in person but addressed the summit virtually. He had sent Lavrov to represent Russia in the summit hosted by South Africa.

The press release issued by the MEA in New Delhi after the Modi-Putin call, however, did not make it clear if the Russian President would address the G20 summit virtually. “The two leaders (Prime Minister and the Russian President) reviewed progress on a number of issues of bilateral cooperation and exchanged views on regional and global issues of mutual concern, including the recently concluded BRICS Summit in Johannesburg,” it stated.

Putin had also skipped the 17th G20 summit held in Bali in Indonesia in November 2022. Lavrov had led the delegation from Russia.

Putin on Monday once again warmly congratulated Modi on the successful landing of India’s Chandrayaan-3 on the South Pole of the Moon. They reaffirmed the willingness to further develop bilateral cooperation in space exploration. The expansion of BRICS, which will undoubtedly contribute to the growth of its influence on international affairs, was emphasised during the call between the two leaders, a spokesperson of the Kremlin stated in a press release issued in Moscow.

Besides, topical issues of Russian-Indian relations, “steadily developing in the spirit of the special and privileged strategic partnership”, were touched upon. “The positive dynamics of trade and economic cooperation was underscored. A mutual commitment to the consistent implementation of large-scale projects in the energy sector and joint work on the expansion of international transport and logistics infrastructure was expressed,” said the spokesperson of the Kremlin.