MOSCOW. Nov 6 (Interfax) - Russia and India are successfully implementing their military and military-technical cooperation plans, even though these plans require special control and adjustment, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at negotiations with Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday.
"I am sure we will have an opportunity today to discuss and review the outcomes of the outgoing year 2019 and, certainly, a plan of our cooperation for 2020. Apart from this, we'll discuss aspects of our military-technical cooperation. There are quite a few of them, and they require our special control. Despite the fact that we are quite successfully implementing all our plans, they still require our attention and adjustment," Shoigu said.
The Russian defense minister said he expected his meeting with the Indian counterpart on Wednesday to be a reliable and substantial continuation of what the two countries have already achieved in their bilateral military and military-technical cooperation.
"Russia and India are bonded by reliable, substantial and friendly relations," Shoigu said. "This particularly concerns cooperation in the military and military-technical areas," he said.
Russia and India are "strengthening interaction between the general staffs and military branches, expanding exchanges between military delegations, and have achieved good results in the military education field," he said.
"We are conducting major combat training events together. The regular Indra exercises are an illustrative example of combat shakedown and cooperation between the Russian and Indian armies," Shoigu said.
Russia and India are maintaining close interaction "at the military level in multilateral formats, primarily within the framework of the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization] and ADMM Plus [meetings of the ASEAN defense ministers and dialogue partners]," he said.
"The defense sphere is among the key avenues of Russian-Indian cooperation," he said.