Talks were dominated by defence and energy issues, with the boss of Russian energy giant Rosneft, Igor Sechin, also attending as a “number of important energy agreements” were on the table.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rosneft said in a statement it will\u00a0supply of up to two million tonnes of oil to India through the Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk in southern Russia.<\/p>\n

New Delhi has long sought to diversify its military imports but analysts believe it could take some time before it moves away from Russia.<\/p>\n

The 10-year defence agreement signed Monday showed both the strength of its ties with Russia “and the difficult path India has to traverse to diversify its arms suppliers and develop its indigenous production capacity,”\u00a0Unnikrishnan said.<\/p>\n

India is also keen to increase domestic production and has launched a joint venture with Russia to manufacture AK-203 assault rifles.<\/p>\n

Kalashnikov Concern said Monday that it had agreed on a contract to supply more than 600,000 AK-203 assault rifles manufactured in India for the Indian defence ministry.<\/p>\n

“We are ready to start production of modern AK-203s …\u00a0within the next few months,” said\u00a0general director Vladimir Lepin.<\/p>\n

India and Russia normally hold annual summits, but the leaders’ last in-person meeting was on the sidelines of the 2019 BRICS Summit in Brazil.<\/p>\n

Putin’s visit “reiterated the importance of this moment when a new order is evolving and that together they have a better chance of shaping it,” Samir Saran of the Observer Research Foundation told AFP.<\/p>\n

The two countries’ foreign and defence ministers held talks Monday ahead of Putin’s arrival.<\/p>\n

Moscow and New Delhi hold “identical or near-identical positions on the most important global and security issues”, said Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.<\/p>\n

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Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded India as “a great power” in New Delhi on Monday as the traditional allies bolstered their military and energy ties, despite Washington’s increasing courtship of the world’s largest democracy.   India confirmed that Russia this month began deliveries of its long-range S-400 ground-to-air missile defence system, which has prompted threats of US sanctions. A 10-year defence technical cooperation agreement and a one-year oil contract were among the deals signed as Putin held talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was only Putin’s second trip abroad since the coronavirus pandemic began — he skipped both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[544,545],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n