India-Russia defence cooperation: Jaitley, Shoigu sign road map

The meeting of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Military Technical Cooperation concluded here on Friday, in which Defence Minister Arun Jaitley and his Russian counterpart General Sergey Shoigu signed a roadmap for boosting bilateral military cooperation.

Jaitley said the meeting would review the entire range of military and military-technical cooperation issues between India and Russia within the framework of the Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership between the two countries.

The issues of Russian-Indian military and military-technical cooperation and its perspectives of further development were also discussed during the meeting.

Both sides stressed on the potential of the cooperation in the spheres of missile and naval technologies, aircraft construction, shipbuilding and modernisation of the land forces equipment.

Moreover, both countries' Defence Ministers gave a high praise to anti-terror and naval exercises, which were held last year. Also, they confirmed the arrangement of holding a joint Russian-Indian inter-specific exercises "Indra-2017" on the Russian territory this autumn.

The meeting was held in a friendly and business atmosphere and demonstrated the mutual desire of further enhance of the multifaceted cooperation between the Defence Ministries.

The "roadmap" of development of bilateral military cooperation between the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of India and the final protocol, aimed at the development of the relations between Russia and India in a military-technical sphere were signed at the end of the Commission meeting.