ST. PETERSBURG, June 1. /TASS/. Military and technical cooperation organized between Russia and India is unprecedented by its scope, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with world news agencies on Thursday.
"Perhaps, there is no need to cite figures and the volumes of our deliveries in the sphere of military and technical cooperation. They are simply absolutely unprecedented by their scope, including by the quality of our interaction," the Russian leader said.
"We don’t have such deep cooperation in sensitive defensive spheres (for example, the missile sphere) with any country of the world and we do have such cooperation with India," Putin said.
As the Russian leader stressed, this is the result of special trustworthy relations between the two countries.
In reply to a question about any close ties with Pakistan, Putin said Russia did not have such relationships.
"Where did you get this from? The United States, for example, has such ties. And there are also large arms deliveries but this does not prevent India from developing relations with the United States," the Russian leader said.
"And our relations with Pakistan do not influence in any way the volume of trade between Russia and India, there is no relationship in this regard," Putin noted.
The Russian leader stressed that the development of relations with other countries did not affect Russian-Indian ties in any way.
"India is a big country with a population of more than one billion. Russia is also no small country. Both India and Russia have a multitude of relations, contacts in the world, interests and we treat with respect all of India’s interests and we don’t think that if we support special relations with India, then India should limit itself in contacts with some other partners," the Russian president said.
"This is simply absurd. The Indian leadership has the same attitude to the development of Russia’s relations with partners throughout the world wherever it may be," Putin said.
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"It is important to proceed from simple deliveries of goods to more complex cooperation. We invite our partners [from India] to localize their production facilities in Russia also," Putin said at the meeting with representatives of Russian and Indian business communities.
Russia and India should support each other and share technologies in areas where both countries have competencies at the global scale, Putin said. "I see a good basis here for deepening bilateral investment ties," the Russian President said. "I am confident our businessmen can create new products with high added value and develop production chains, particularly with promotion of their goods and services on markets of third countries," he added.