Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will make a one-day trip to Moscow on July 8, The Tribune of India reported.
The Indian newspaper notes that the prime minister's visit to Moscow is of strategic importance for several reasons at once.
First, Modi's trip comes shortly after he took over the government for the third time and the Russian president was re-elected for a fifth term. Second, since the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, India has become a major buyer of Russian oil, and the country also remains heavily dependent on Russian arms supplies.
"Unsurprisingly, India has been balancing on a fine line in its relations with Russia over the past two years, though it remains acutely aware that the US is closely watching how the relationship develops," The Tribune wrote.
Modi previously visited Russia in 2019, at which time he traveled to Vladivostok. Moscow was last visited by the prime minister in 2015.
Modi will visit Russia after leading the Indian government for the third time despite his party, the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failing to win a majority in the new parliament. It lost 62 seats in the election, bringing the total number of seats down to 240. This is the worst result in 15 years.
It is important to know, after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Western sanctions that followed, India became one of the major buyers of Russian oil.
India did not condemn Russia's military invasion of Ukraine. Along with some other major countries, India did not sign the final communiqué of the international conference on peace in Ukraine held earlier in June in Switzerland. The non-signatories cited, among other things, the need for Russia's participation in discussions on peace initiatives.
