New Delhi: Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to visit India in 2025, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed Tuesday, adding that preparations were on and that the exact dates would be announced soon.
At an event, the press secretary to the Russian president said: “We welcomed Prime Minister Modi twice this year in our country and we hope that soon we will figure out the dates of the visit of President Putin to India”.
Putin is expected to visit India sometime next year for the annual India-Russia summit. It is India’s turn to host the summit following Modi’s visit to Russia for the annual summit this year during 8-10 July.
At the event organised by Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik, Peskov said that groundwork was being laid for the visit. However, the dates will depend on several factors, including the number of delegation-level meetings before the annual leaders’ summit.
Putin’s visit would be his first to India since the war with Ukraine started in February 2022, following which an arrest warrant for him was issued by the International Criminal Court next March.
India is neither a signatory nor a state party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and therefore does not need to enforce any of its warrants or directions. Putin has maintained a low profile globally since the war started.
He has, however, continued international visits to friendly countries such as China and North Korea and visited allies such as Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Belarus. He went to Vietnam in June 2024.
Since assuming power for a third term, Modi has visited Russia twice, including for the annual summit in July and the BRICS summit in October. At BRICS, he also held a bilateral meeting with China’s Xi Jinping, which was the first meeting between the two in almost five years.
Since the beginning of Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine, India has maintained its political ties with the country, while expanding economic ties by buying Russian oil. India bought $54 billion of oil in 2023-24—a steep rise from $5.2 billion in 2021-22—after the West imposed sanctions on Russia.
India in the past few months has taken a more proactive role in pushing for a solution to the war, with Modi visiting Ukraine in August 2024 and also meeting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the margins of the United Nations Summit of the Future in September 2024.
In early November, during a visit to Australia, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said India was “proactively playing a role” in finding a solution to the war and that New Delhi was in touch with all parties.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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