During the meeting, both sides are expected to urge the private sector defence companies on both sides to form joint ventures and to manufacture spare parts, components, aggregates and other products for the maintenance of Russian origin Arms.

Both India and Russia has strong cooperation in military and military-technical fields, which is the main pillar of their bilateral Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.

Leading a high-level official and business delegation, defence Minister Rajnath Singh will visit Russia next month. Both India and Russia has strong cooperation in military and military-technical fields, which is the main pillar of their bilateral Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.

Top sources confirmed to Financial Express Online “This will be his first visit to Russia as a Defence Minister where he is leading a delegation to the India-Russia Defence Industry Cooperation Meeting from November 5-6.” Also, Defence Production Secretary Ajay Kumar and other senior officers will be part of that delegation.

This meeting is a follow up to what the leaders had agreed to during the recently concluded 20th Annual India-Russia Annual Summit.

During the meeting, both sides are expected to urge the private sector defence companies on both sides to form joint ventures and to manufacture spare parts, components, aggregates and other products for the maintenance of Russian origin Arms. And to also manufacture defence platforms under Make in India initiative through transfer of technology.

Since the 2011-2020 Long-Term Program for Military and Technical Cooperation is coming to an end next year, during the meeting the defence minister and his Russian counterpart will discuss ways of speeding up the new long-term plan of interaction in this area.

Leaders of both the countries Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to prepare a framework for cooperation on reciprocal logistics support. Delegations from both sides have been meeting to talk about having an institutional arrangement for reciprocal provision of logistic support and services for the Armed Forces. And next week the two sides will try to close this agreement.

Besides the joint exercises, the two countries have on regular basis, the discussions will also focus on the further development of bilateral cooperation between their Armed Forces.

India and Russia are also getting ready for the second edition of the Joint Tri-Services Exercises INDRA-2019 to be carried out in India when the armed forces will get to learn from the Russian experience in Syria.

Since the exercise is going to be on a large scale and the theme will be anti-terrorism operations, the modalities will be discussed by both sides in the presence of the defence minister.