MOSCOW, March 23. /TASS/. Russia considers developing relations with India to be one of its foreign policy priorities and respects New Delhi’s course of action to protect its national interests, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

"Strengthening the special privileged strategic partnership with New Delhi is among our unconditional foreign policy priorities," the top diplomat said in a video address to participants and organizers of the Russia and India: Toward a New Bilateral Agenda international conference.

"We highly appreciate that our Indian friends fully share this approach," Lavrov noted.

According to the foreign minister, "New Delhi deserves the deepest respect for pursuing an independent foreign policy as part of its course toward strategic autonomy, consistently prioritizing the national interest." "As a result, India’s influence is steadily growing in the emerging multipolar world as one of the world’s largest political and economic centers of a distinctive civilization and a great power of the 21st century," Lavrov pointed out.

"The time-tested Russian-Indian friendship is a model of how interstate relations based on equality, mutual trust and respect, and consideration of each other’s interests can and should be built," the top Russian diplomat emphasized, adding that "it is difficult to overestimate the role of a trusting dialogue at the highest level."