Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s video address to the participants in the Russia and India: Toward a New Bilateral Agenda international conference, Moscow, March 27, 2025
Colleagues,
Allow me to offer my greetings to the participants in the first international conference titled Russia and India: Toward a New Bilateral Agenda.
At the outset, I would like to thank the Russian International Affairs Council and the Embassy of India in Russia for working together to organise this new forum. We are delighted to welcome here in Moscow our friends from India representing its academia and businesses. I know that there are also diplomats among you, including those working in senior positions.
Russia views strengthening its privileged strategic partnership with India as a foreign policy priority as per its Foreign Policy Concept. We have sparred no effort in pursuing this objective. In terms of our practical interactions, we can see that India has been acting along the same lines.
Our two countries share long-standing ties. We can even say that these relations have passed the test of time. Today, Russia and India are promoting their cooperation on an equal footing, based on a sincere and shared respect for one another and taking into account each other’s interests. The way our respective leaders have been contributing to this process can hardly be underestimated. The fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Russia as his first overseas visit after his re-election last year sent a powerful message. The ball is now in our court. President Vladimir Putin accepted the invitation he received from India’s Prime Minister. Efforts to prepare the President’s visit to the Republic of India are underway.
Our relations rely on a solid economic foundation. We have been consistent in expanding our trade and economic ties, while also effectively fending off attempts by certain ill-wishers to create impediments for us. In 2024, our bilateral trade exceeded $60 billion, which was an all-time high in terms of our relations in their present-day form. Of course, we can aim even higher than that. We will carry on with our efforts to achieve the objectives as set forth by our respective leaders during last year’s July summit. These objectives include increasing trade to $100 billion by 2030. Stepping up practical cooperation not only reflects the trade potential Russia and India have but also empowers businesses of our countries to tap this potential, including by undertaking joint investment projects.
We have also gathered positive momentum in promoting our political dialogue. The fact that Moscow and New Delhi share close or even converging views on the emergence of a multipolar world order, is also a major asset. This order must have a diverse mix of development models at its core, while all countries must adhere to the principles as set forth in the UN Charter. They must comply with its provisions in full and considering their interconnected nature, instead of using a selective approach.
Together with our Indian partners, we want to inject more democracy into international relations, and to give the Global South a bigger say in economic governance, while respecting the unique cultural and civilizational identities of all nations around the world, including the right to trace their own path. All countries which are part of what we call the Global Majority, adhere to this vision.
Russia praises the Indian diplomacy and welcomes its commitment to following an independent, multi-directional foreign policy. It is our belief that India has every right to be viewed as a major power in today’s world and one of the most influential centres in the multipolar world order. We share India’s foreign policy concept with its slogan “The world is one family.” It stands for promoting international cooperation for improving the wellbeing for the entire humankind by balancing the interests of all countries. We also value the fact that we have been working together within the United Nations, the Group of Twenty, BRICS, the SCO and other multilateral platforms.
Russia is grateful for New Delhi’s constructive contribution to holding the historical BRICS Summit in Kazan in October 2024 as part of Russia’s BRICS chairmanship.
On a separate note, I would like to extend our gratitude on behalf of Russia for the fact that India, including its Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have been following a balanced approach to the Ukraine crisis at all times and called for settling it through dialogue and by addressing its root causes.
Russia fully shares this approach and has been expressing its readiness to hold talks from the moment this crisis started. These talks must pave the way for settling the conflict and ensuring lasting peace by removing the conflict’s root causes, as I have already said.
Let me remind our Indian friends one more time that these root causes primarily include the attempts by the West to draw Ukraine into NATO and the security threats Russia has been facing following the alliance’s eastward expansion, as well as targeted and consistent policies by the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, which came to power in an anti-constitutional government coup in February 2014. These policies provide for cancelling everything Russian by enacting laws and using extermination practices. This effort targets the Russian language, culture, media outlets, and the canonical Orthodox church. All these actions violate the UN Charter’s Article 1 and many other international conventions. There is a deep-rooted belief in Russia that addressing these root causes would create a solid foundation for achieving lasting peace and bringing about a political settlement to the security crisis which is unfolding in Eurasia’s European part.
In conclusion, I would like to say that communities bringing together Russian and Indian experts and political observers, the so-called Track II diplomacy, play an instrumental role in analysing processes unfolding around the world and also maintaining positive momentum in our bilateral relations. There are many challenges in today’s world and so much uncertainty. Against this backdrop, an honest, free and inclusive effort to ponder global development trends and devise practical recommendations for decision-makers in the corresponding states has special importance.
I am convinced that not only you can live up to this mission, but you are also willing to go the whole nine yards, as the saying goes. I hope that during this conference you will discuss the comprehensive ties between Russia and India in all their aspects and outline ways for developing these relations in a new geopolitical environment that is taking shape on our watch.
I wish you fruitful discussions and all the best.
