External affairs minister S Jaishankar will visit Russia next week to co-chair a meeting of the Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC), a key body overseeing bilateral relations.
Jaishankar is visiting Russia during August 23-24 at the invitation of first deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, the external affairs ministry said on Saturday. Besides co-chairing the 27th session of the IRIGC-TEC, Jaishankar will meet Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov to discuss regional and global issues.
India and Russia have two inter-governmental commissions, one for trade and technology-related issues and another for defence and military cooperation, and these are among the highest bilateral decision-making bodies. The India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Military Technical Cooperation is expected to meet later in the year.
At the last meeting of the IRIGC-TEC in Moscow in August 2025, the Indian side reiterated its concerns about the imbalance in two-way trade, driven largely by purchases of Russian energy while Indian exports have remained stagnant.
Bilateral trade touched a record of $68.7 billion in 2024-25, though India’s exports were worth only $4.88 billion.
The Indian side also called on Russia to address tariff and non-tariff trade barriers, remove bottlenecks in logistics, promote connectivity through the International North-South Transport Corridor, Northern Sea Route and Chennai-Vladivostok Corridor, and implement payment mechanisms smoothly to help tackle the imbalance and allow the two sides to achieve the target of growing trade to $100 billion by 2030.