Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold summit talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Friday, aiming to boost trade with the top buyer of Russia’s arms and seaborne oil as Western sanctions squeeze their decades-old ties, Reuters reported.
Putin is on his first visit to India in four years at a time when New Delhi is engaged in talks with the U.S. for a trade deal to cut punitive tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on its goods over India’s Russian oil purchases.
Moscow has been India’s top arms supplier for decades and has said that it wants to import more Indian goods in an effort to grow trade to $100 billion by 2030 that so far has been skewed in its favour due to New Delhi’s energy imports, according to Reuters.
