Ahead of Putin's Visit: Kremlin Reveals Why Russia Stands With India

"Russia and Indian relationship is not just a standard set of diplomatic protocols and trade agreements, it's more of that it's much more important, our bilateral relationship rests on a deep historic background of mutual understanding. A mutual understanding of partnership, and a mutual vision of Global Affairs and system of Global Affairs based on international law on the rule of law, and the ability of taking it into account each other's interests. We are proud to have been shoulder to shoulder next to our Indian friends during their historic growth, and then the same time, we are very grateful to India for a very friendly stand nowadays, very friendly stand towards our country and towards our interaction on global in bilateral and global affairs. This background of our bilateral relations, gives us a very wide perspective of developing bilateral cooperation in various fields," he said.

The Kremlin spokesperson highlighted Indo-Russian defence cooperation and said that there is bright future ahead for this cooperation.

"We are in very close dialog with our Indian friends and International Affairs on the basis of United Nations. We are exchanging our views, finding that they really correspond in lots of majority of fields. As far as our cooperation in the defence industry goes, let's remember famous Brahmos missiles. It's not only just production or it's not only acts of buying or selling, it's exchange of high technologies, and it really paves the way for a bright future in this field of cooperation. We're developing quite, quite a variety of very complicated systems. And in this sense, of course, we have capabilities. We are ready to share this with our Indian friends, our experience," he said.

Peskov said that Russia continues to be an important supplier of energy sources to India at competitive prices.

"Energy security, where Russia continues to be a very important supplier of energy sources to India, competitive prices. We have no doubt that this trade is of a great benefit for India, and at the same time of mutual benefit. So we're exchanging mutual investments, joint investments and it makes this kind of cooperation even more valuable for our countries, in terms for securing future of this country. We were deeply involved in creating a sector of peaceful nuclear energy in India, in Kudankulam, and so we were hoping for continuation of this project," Peskov said.

"Tariff between India and then the United States is rather a question of bilateral relations between India and the US, what concerns us is the way we're going to continue and enlarge the volume of our bilateral business with India, not letting anyone interfere," he added.

The Kremlin spokesperson further said that the fact that a large volume of trade between the two countries was being paid in national currencies was important to secure this trade.

"We have to organize our trade volume and our trade interaction in the way that cannot be affected by third countries. Nearly all, the whole volume of our trade relations is being paid by national currencies. This is very important. This is very important because thus we're securing our trade. We're securing our sovereignty of both countries, Russia and India, and we're securing our trade cooperation," Peskov said.

Peskov said that Russia was looking at increasing imports from India and for this a forum of importers during the Russian President's visit which will aim to find ways at achieving this.

"We are aware of that we're selling much more than we buy from India. And we know that our Indian friends are concerned about that and that we and by the way, we're jointly looking for his possibilities of increasing import imports from India to Russia. So we want to buy more from India, and so during the visit of the President, there will be a forum of importers. This will be an event In order to pursuing a goal to discuss the possibilities of increasing imports from India to Russia. We're working together with our Indian counterparts in order to find ways to include, to increase the amount of goods that we can purchase from India, not only goods but maybe services," he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will pay a state visit to India from December 4-5 at the invitation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. During the visit, Putin will attend the 23rd India-Russia Annual Summit and hold talks with PM Modi.

The visit will provide an opportunity for the leadership of India and Russia to review progress in bilateral relations, outline the vision for strengthening the 'Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership', and exchange views on regional and global issues of mutual interest.

- ANI