Modi To Pay First State Visit To Russia On Dec 23-24

16 December, New Delhi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will leave for his first state visit to Russia on December 23, the day storming Winter Session of Parliament comes to an end.

This would be Modi’s first official bilateral visit to Russia, though he attended the G-20 summit in Ufa, the eastern city of the country.

During his two day visit, Modi will participate in annual summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had come to India for the annual event last year.

A hosts of agreements are likely to be inked after the talks between the two sides, including the much-talked about deal for acquisition of S-400 anti-missile defence system to defend the Indian sky, sources in the government today indicated.

Vital decisions are likely in the spheres of military-technological cooperation and nuclear power sector, they said. There had been high level exchanges in recent past, in the run up to the annual summit between the two leaders. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar visited Moscow on November 30 and attended the meeting of Inter-Governmental-Commission on Military Technical Cooperation with Russian Vice-Premier Dmitry Rogozin, who visited New Delhi in the first week of December.

During the visit, Mr Rogozin also met Mr Modi, among others. Russia is building the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in India under the 1988 inter-governmental agreement, which is said to be the most powerful and safest in India.

In December 2014, Moscow and New Delhi signed a document on strategic vision for serial construction of nuclear power units in India using Russian technologies.