H. E. Mr. Alexander Kadakin

ANA.: The friendly relations between India and Russia have survived the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Despite low-level people-to-people contacts, what is it that gives sustenance to the relations?

H.E.: Special relationship has existed between Russia and India for many decades from the dawn of India's freedom. There are so many "firsts" in our relations with India. We were the first to establish diplomatic ties with India even before its formal independence from the foreign rule in 1947. We were the first to play a pioneering role in industrializing Indian economy in the 50s-60s with construction of such diverse projects starting from the Bhilai steel plant in 1959 all the way to the antibiotics plant in Rishikesh in 1967. We were the first to open outer space for the Indian satellite in 1975 and Indian citizen Rakesh Sharma in 1984. Again we were the first to bring our bilateral relations to the level of strategic partnership in 2000, creating a new phenomenon in the diplomatic practice.

Currently Russia is the only state that offers India razor-edge military hardware and joint production of state-of-the-art weapon systems. This vivid example upholds Russia’s truly unique attitude to its sister – India. The historic legacy along with exciting prospects is the distinguished feature of our old friendship irrespective of the global political climate.

ANA.: Excellency, do you agree that the most significant phase of bilateral relations was the period between 1971 and 1976 when the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation was signed in August 1971? Are relations at a different level today?

H.E.: Definitely the level is different but there is no reason to make a comparison here. Russia had inherited from the USSR really unique and priceless asset – our deep-rooted, multifaceted friendly relations with India. This year we are going to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the historic Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation with India. However, the period you had mentioned refers to the Soviet Union – the country of another social and economic structure which was also different in terms of its geopolitical scale. One should take into consideration this factor as well as global changes in general, while appraising our present ties. Given that, I believe that relationship between Russia and India is notable for its maturity and diverse, concrete and weighty substance. Obviously, it is the result of our fruitful cooperation throughout more than six decades. Over-all these years cooperation with India has remained a cornerstone of Russia's foreign policy. But the main feature of the recent years is deepening our interaction against the backdrop of huge global transformations.

[expand title="Read More"]Our relations reflect not only the shared attitude to common threats whether it is our fight against terrorism, or struggle for multipolarity in international relations and institutions. The true essence of our strategic alliance lies with in fact that we have so much to share and nothing to fight about. We have never had any differences, we have always stood together. Take the vision of regional politics in South Asia or industrialization, UN politics or conflict resolution. Moreover, our uninterrupted mutually beneficial collaboration is not driven solely by common enemies or threats but is targeted at creative work, never clouded by even an allusion of misunderstanding throughout many decades. The joint work of two great nations – Russia and a super-power-in the making, India, – stands as a weighty factor in world politics which other countries have to take due account of. I always prefer to speak of our cooperation as a rare and even unique case of partnership for peace and mutual development, शांतिनीति और विकासनीति. Today we are prepared to take ground breaking steps to forward our political and economic cooperation to an even higher plateau. The outcome of the December summit was quite evincive in this respect.

ANA.: Excellency, what have been the concrete gains for your country consequent to the signing of the "Declaration of Strategic Partnership between India and the Russian Federation" in October, 2000?

H.E.: The Delhi Declaration of Strategic Partnership signed 10 years ago introduced novel components to our ties with India and to international relations in general. Suffice it to say about the established practice of regular annual summits, with each and every of them giving a strong boost to Russian-Indian cooperation. Both Moscow and New Delhi acknowledge the unique degree of mutual understanding and trust inherent in our ties. As I mentioned before, this phenomenon is based on our close or common priorities in social and economic development, foreign and domestic policy, including our approaches towards ensuring peace and security and shaping new global architecture. In essence, after ten years of implementing the Delhi Declaration, the Russian-Indian interaction has acquired a totally new qualitative format and reached the level of truly privileged strategic partnership. It was acknowledged by the participants of the recent summit, and this definition has been added to the modern international diplomatic vocabulary. Politically, this is the most graphic outcome of the December summit.

ANA.: The visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on December 21, 2010 was a historic moment for both countries. The two sides signed 29 agreements – both government-to-government and business-to-business, covering a diverse range of fields including defence, oil and gas, science and technology, nuclear energy and trade. Excellency, which, in your opinion, are the areas which are critical and will give fresh impetus to India-Russia relations?

H.E.: The key areas of our interaction are reflected in the notions of continuity and renewal. The issues of modernization and innovation are the crucial ones while discussing the entire gamut of bilateral relations which undoubtedly received new boosts for further development.

In each and every field of our interaction we have reached and signed milestone agreements during the summit – whether we talk about the energy sector in general or expansion of existing capacities of nuclear units in India. I always stress the fact that while your nuclear cooperation with foreign countries has kind of hypothetical status so far, our Kudankulam Unit-1 will start running in January or February. The general agreement on expanding the Kudankulam site and getting another site somewhere in West Bengal, Orissa or Karnataka, is another thing of tremendous importance for India. In defence, I would mention just the joint designing of the fifth generation fighter which is no less important.

ANA.: During President Medvedev's visit, the two sides pledged to double their bilateral trade to $ 20 billion by 2015. Is this not a rather modest target for the two large countries?

H.E.: We do acknowledge that the potential of our economic ties is much higher than its present level. Immaturity of the Russian financial and banking sector as well as outdated perceptions by Indian entrepreneurs concerning the investment opportunities open in my country weaken our business cooperation.

Both Russia and India have a clear understanding of the urgent need to strengthen this segment. It was once again stressed during the recent summit.

However, recently we have witnessed a significant improvement in this field. I cannot but emphasize the rapid growth of our bilateral trade, which has increased almost 10 times during the last decade reaching 9.5-10 billion USD. Russia traditionally sells industrial and technical equipment, which constitutes more than half of our exports to India. Pharmaceutical cooperation, based on solid historic background, plays an important role in our trade, making up one third of India’s exports to Russia. The agreements reached during the New Delhi summit are aimed at stronger cooperation in pharma- and bio-tech sphere beyond the existing scale. These traditional forms of economic interaction constitute a solid basis for expansion of our bilateral trade.

Moreover, we have launched a number of brand new projects - in the Skolkovo innovation centre, automobile industry, inter-bank collaboration, etc. The upcoming introduction of GLONASS navigation system in India symbolizes the flagship of Russian-Indian innovative cooperation. India will be producing on-ground equipment required for smooth and more effective functioning of space technologies that will allow us to ensure logistics security and prevent natural disasters. Indian companies actively participate in the "Sakhalin-1" project. The Indian ONGC is one of the largest shareholders of this enterprise, as well as other projects in Siberia. Recently, Russian "Sibur" and Indian Reliance Industries Ltd. agreed to establish joint ventures in butyl rubber production based on Russian technologies. These shining examples of our technological partnership give us a great occasion not only to reaffirm 20 billion USD as a turnover goal by 2015, but even make a bold push for crossing this figure.

ANA.: The year 2011 will be celebrated as the Festival of Indian Culture in Russia and in 2012 India will celebrate the Festival of Russian Culture in India. Excellency, what impact such high profile events will have on broader people-to-people contacts between the two countries?

H.E.: We have all reasons to expect that these cultural exchanges will greatly enrich the entire canvas of Russian-Indian relationship. That was proved by phenomenal success of Russia-Indian Cultural Festivals that were held in 1986-87 and recently during the Years of Russia in India and India in Russia.

In my opinion one of the best ways to bridge the cultural gap is to see more films. It is not accidental that President Medvedev visited Bollywood's Yash Raj Studios in Mumbai. He had a wonderful meeting with the Bollywood world, Mr Yash Chopra, Mr Shahrukh Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Mr Shetty, Mr Sippy and many others. Films are the best way to learn more about each other's life and understand each other's soul better. At that meeting in was decided to increase co-production in films. Just on the eve of the Presidential visit Doordarshan showed a Russian series called "Indian", the first Russian film shot in Bollywood. We want many more of those in the future. The ideas are mooted out about having co-production of two artistic films, one being a remake of the famous "Pardesi" of 1956 starring Nargiz, etc. There is also a plan of shooting a TV artistic serial about the family of the famous Russian artist, traveller and philosopher, Nikolas Roerich, who made India his second home.

We also plan to intensify our tourist exchange. We want our people to visit not only Goa but also Kerala which have become increasingly popular. We want them to visit all other parts of India. As a matter of fact, tourism has grown immensely during the last few years. In Goa now we have forty thousand people annually, while the entire coastline accounts for almost eighty thousand Russian tourists. We would also welcome the expansion of Indian tourism to Russia. It should cover not only Moscow or St. Petersburg, but the vast areas of Siberia, Lake Baikal and the Far East. We have the famous "Golden" and "Silver Rings" around Moscow and ancient Russian towns and townships with very old monasteries and churches. The geography of mutual visits should be expanded.

To summarize – I believe that today we are experiencing an exemplary period in our relationship with very pragmatic, concrete and precise targets which we can attain together. This togetherness indeed is the gist of friendship between Russia and great India – our old, time-tested, sincere and trusted friend.