External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will travel to Moscow to hold talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on November 8, a Russian foreign ministry spokesperson said on Friday.
The announcement comes amid heightened tensions between Russia and the West over the Ukraine conflict.
“Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will have talks with External Affairs Minister of India Dr S Jaishankar on November 8 in Moscow,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
“The ministers will discuss the current state of bilateral relations and the international agenda,” she added.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is yet to make any announcement on the visit.
It is learnt that ways to expand cooperation in the areas of energy and food security could figure in the talks.
In the last few months, India has increased the import of discounted crude oil from Russia, notwithstanding the increasing disquiet over it by several western powers.
Jaishankar and Lavrov have already met four times after the Ukraine conflict began in February.
The Russian foreign minister visited India in April, during which he held extensive talks with Jaishankar and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India in December last year to attend the India-Russia annual summit.
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The two countries have a mechanism under which India’s prime minister and the Russian president hold a summit meeting annually to review the entire gamut of ties.
It is Modi’s turn to travel to Russia for this year’s summit. However, there is no clarity yet on the summit this year.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held a telephonic conversation with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu on Wednesday and conveyed to him that the nuclear option should not be resorted to by any side involved in the conflict.
Since the Ukraine conflict began in February, Modi has spoken to Putin as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a number of times.
In a phone conversation with Zelenskyy on October 4, Modi said there can be “no military solution” and that India is ready to contribute to any peace efforts.
At a bilateral meeting with Putin in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on September 16, Modi told the Russian president that “today’s era is not of war”.
India is yet to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has been maintaining that the crisis must be resolved through diplomacy and dialogue.
There has been intensification of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, with Moscow carrying out retaliatory missile strikes targeting various Ukrainian cities in response to a huge blast in Crimea around two weeks ago.
Moscow has blamed Kyiv for the blast.
India’s crude oil imports from Russia have jumped more than 50 times since April and now, it makes up for 10 per cent of all crude bought from overseas.
Russia has been a time-tested partner of India and a key pillar of New Delhi’s foreign policy.
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