Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Sept 14: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin are scheduled to meet on Friday in Uzbekistan. The two presidents will start trade negotiations and talk about the ‘saturation’ of the Indian market on the fringes of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Notably, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is an intergovernmental organisation with eight Member States (China, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), four Observer States (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia), and six Dialogue Partners at the moment (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey).
15 international leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, will attend the meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on September 15 and 16. PM Modi is one of them.
“There are plans to discuss issues of ‘saturation’ of the Indian market with Russian fertilisers and bilateral food supplies,” news agency Reuters quoted the Kremlin’s handout.
This will be the first gathering since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022. Prior to this, the ministry of external affairs said that PM Modi called Putin when military exercises were taking place in Kyiv. He requested with the leader of the Kremlin for an urgent end to the violence in the nation of eastern Europe. Additionally, it was crucially important at the time to protect the lives of the more than 20,000 Indian students studying in Ukraine.
The conference takes place as Moscow struggles under severe international and bilateral sanctions, mainly from the West, as a result of the Kremlin’s military incursions into Ukraine.
