Moscow [Russia], August 22 : External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday and said the global context for the meeting is provided by the evolving geopolitical situation, the shifting economic and trade landscape, and the shared goal is to maximise complementarity.
In his opening remarks, Jaishankar said he and Lavrov have been meeting regularly on the sidelines of multilateral events as well, most recently at the BRICS Summit and the SCO Foreign Ministers' Summit.
"I think these regular meetings have helped us to be in continuous touch which is important at a time when international relations is changing so much," he said.
The two leaders reviewed bilateral ties and exchanged views on politics, trade, economics, investment, defence, science and technology, and, of course, people-to-people exchanges.
Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the SCO Summit and the 22nd Annual Summit last year, he said the two countries are preparing for the Annual Summit at the end of the year.
He said leaders of two countries have always given guidance to take forward the Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.
"We have had, as you have noted, a very productive meeting yesterday with Dennis Manturov on the Intergovernmental Commission. I think we discussed a lot of issues in our bilateral cooperation, found a lot of solutions as well," Jaishankar said.
"The global context for our meeting today is provided by the evolving geopolitical situation, the shifting economic and trade landscape, and our shared goal is to maximize our complementarity," he said.