Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin will “definitely” not meet by the end of the year, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.
The two leaders don’t have time to see each other, Peskov explained, and are therefore set to skip their annual talks. Moscow and New Delhi, however, are working on organizing a meeting for next year, the spokesman revealed.
“It definitely will not happen before the end of the year. They won’t have time; it won’t be possible to synchronize the schedules. But, for next year, such a possibility is being explored,” Peskov told reporters.
The fate of this year’s Modi-Putin summit had been uncertain, with the two sides sending mixed messages on the prospects of the meeting actually taking place. In early October, Russian media reports cited Indian Ambassador to Moscow Pawan Kapoor saying “high-level” talks were being held regarding a potential summit by the end of 2023.
The remarks, however, were promptly refuted by the Indian Foreign Ministry, which said the ambassador was apparently misquoted and there were no “immediate date or plans” on the table.
Moscow and New Delhi have held top-level annual bilateral summits since 2000, when the two countries adopted a declaration on strategic partnership. Putin and Modi also skipped their meeting in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In December 2021, Putin visited New Delhi with a high-level delegation to discuss broader areas of economic, military, and cultural cooperation. The two leaders also met in person in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in September 2022. This year, however, Modi and Putin have spoken only by phone.
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