Trade deals and what else to expect from Narendra Modi’s face-to-face meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is reportedly set to have his first face-to-face meeting on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, where the two premiers are likely to discuss trade deals, pandemic and even the war.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit 2022 is set to kick off today at Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Modi will attend the summit today and tomorrow and is expected to hold bilateral talks with several world leaders. However, India's foreign secretary Vinay Kwatra declined to confirm a one-on-one meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The SCO's permanent members are China, India, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. The meeting of the leaders comes after two years due to Covid, the leaders are likely to discuss trade and defence systems on the sidelines

"PM Modi’s bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev are almost fixed and the meetings will take place on the sidelines of the SCO summit in Samarkand," a source told ANI.

Russian Ambassador to India Denis Alipov also confirmed Putin's meeting with Modi.

"Russian President Putin is going to participate in the forthcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit. PM Modi is also going. We've already announced that there will be a number of meetings in Samarkand, including with PM Modi," Alipov said on Thursday.

Kremlin said on Tuesday that Putin and Modi will discuss trade as well as sales of Russian fertilizers and mutual food supplies. "There are plans to discuss issues of 'saturation' of the Indian market with Russian fertilizers and bilateral food supplies," it said in its handout of materials for the meeting.

This comes at a time when New Delhi is looking for a three-year fertiliser import deal with Moscow.

India's fertilizer imports from Russia rose to $1.03 billion in the first four months of this fiscal year that started Apr. 1 as against $773.54 million through 12 months of last fiscal year, according to government data.

Trade turnover between India and Russia has seen an "unprecedented growth" in the first half of 2022 and reached over $11 billion, paving way to achieve the goal of bringing the level of mutual trade to $30 billion by 2025.

"We can say that our trade and economic cooperation is transforming. In the first half of 2022, we saw an unprecedented growth in trade - by July it reached more than USD 11 billion, and USD 13.6 billion for the entire 2021. This is a solid figure, which allows us to discuss the likelihood of achieving the goal of bringing the level of mutual trade to USD 30 billion by 2025," Alipov told state-owned TASS Russian news agency.

Alipov had said there are plans to increase the supply of pharmaceuticals, agricultural goods, electronics, and automotive parts from India to the Russian market as well as high-tech goods, gold, and precious metals from Russia to the Indian market.

The diplomat said that other promising areas of bilateral cooperation include the mining sector, civil aviation, and shipbuilding, PTI reported.

Meanwhile, Moscow and New Delhi were reportedly discussing mutual acceptance of Russia’s Mir and India's RuPay payment cards, as well as options to implement each other’s interbank transfer services: India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and SPFS, the Russian alternative to SWIFT.

India has been boosting purchases of Russian crude over the past six months, while the US has repeatedly urged New Delhi to support a price cap on Russian oil. However, India has been reluctant to join the Western sanctions on Moscow, placing domestic energy security above geopolitical conflicts.