Reports about the disagreements between India and Russia on Ukraine, which reportedly scuttled a larger delegation-level meeting during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent two-day visit to Moscow, have been dismissed by India as "factually incorrect."
He said at a media briefing, "To the best of my knowledge, no specific programming elements were canceled during the Prime Minister's visit to Moscow." He was replying to a question about its supposed friction in Moscow that caused one session to be dropped.
His reaction: "Factually incorrect and quite misleading." He further claimed that Prime Minister Modi's visit to Moscow was a grand success, stating that not only did the discussions between Modi and President Putin go beyond the scheduled time, but "there was absolutely no cancellation of any program.".
The state-run TASS news agency of Russia had quoted the Kremlin Spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, as saying that on Tuesday, Modi and Putin preferred a more intimate meeting wherein all issues were discussed constructively with no requirement for a larger breakout session.
Basically, Peskov said that this does not mean there have been any problems as such; it is just that the conversation between Putin and Modi lasted more than three hours, with the participation of officials responsible for "almost all major spheres of bilateral cooperation."
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