India, Russia Discuss Bilateral Cooperation

• India, Russia review full spectrum of bilateral ties
• Focus on scheduling upcoming high-level engagements
• Continued alignment on regional and global issues

India and Russia organized Foreign Office Consultations in New Delhi. Both sides checked the overall state of their bilateral relations under the Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership and also talked about the time frame of new top-level meetings. These discussions show that there is still a diplomatic coordination between the two countries although the regional and global situations are changing.

 The consultations were co-chaired by Vikram Misri and Andrey Rudenko to mark continued senior-level institutional dialogue. Both parties, during the meeting, reviewed effective cooperation in major sectors and reiterated their support for deepening bilateral relations. They talked about a variety of issues - political, economic, and strategic engagement - which shows the broad area of the partnership.

Planning future meetings was an important part of the discussion, and both countries talked about the schedule of upcoming leadership and official contacts. This is a rather optimistic planning to ensure maintaining high-level regular engagements so as not to lose pace in the bilateral relations. The consultations can be considered as a way to set priorities straight and to check that this is in line with what has been done so far.

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Besides covering the bilateral issues, the two sides talked about the regional and global happenings of mutual interest. These talks are a testimony of the maiden strategy alignment between India and Russia on a wider scale, especially on how they can cooperate to globally tackle challenges and maintain stability in the ever changing geopolitical situation.

At the same time, these talks demonstrate the indispensability of diplomatic meetings/debates for dealing with intricate international issues and enhancing multilateral platform coordination. After the talks, S. Jaishankar and Rudenko had a meeting in which they pondered over increased cooperation between the two sides and also went over the current global issues.

This extra meeting is an indicator of the unbroken chain of the multi-level communication which, in fact, has made the depth of the bilateral partnership stronger. In general, the talks are a clear indication that the India-Russia relationship is a long-term one and the two sides are mainly focussed on keeping up the dialogue, strategic coordination and structured engagement so that they can effectively face the changes of the global and regional environment and at the same time the two countries will cooperate in the long run even more closely.