NSA Doval had rare one-to-one with Putin on Global issues

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week made a very rare exception and summoned visiting Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval for a rare one hour one to one meeting to discuss global and bilateral issues.

Updated on: Feb 11, 2023, 09:16:27 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

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Russian President Vladimir Putin had an hour-long one-to-one meeting with visiting Ajit Doval, National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Thursday evening in which there was a nothing-off-the-table discussion with an aim to cement bilateral ties and share global security environment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval

While both Moscow and New Delhi have been silent on the meeting – the Indian embassy said in a tweet on Thursday that Doval met Putin but did not elaborate, and most reports have focused on proceedings at the meeting of regional NSAs which Putin also attended – HT learns that President Putin spoke at length on the global and regional security environment and ways to further strengthen age-old India-Russia ties. The two sides agreed to implement the special and privileged relationship between India and Russia during the highly classified meeting.

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According to diplomats based in Moscow, NSA Ajit Doval met President Putin twice, once with the National Security Advisors of Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan as part of the regional dialogue on Afghanistan. Then, on Thursday, he was summoned by the Russian leader for a rare closed door meeting. NSA Doval also had a bilateral exchange with President Putin’s right-hand man and Secretary of Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. Both Putin and Patrushev have known NSA Doval from the past with the Russian NSA in touch with the Indian national security official on international and national security matters.

While Doval may be carrying a message for PM Modi from President Putin, one of the key outcomes of the 5th Regional Dialogue on Afghanistan in Moscow under the chairmanship of the Indian NSA was the convergence between all participating national security officials on countering terror threat emanating from the Af-Pak region. While India has made it clear that it would do all it can to support Kabul with an inclusive and representative dispensation in interest of Afghan society, the participants agreed to share real intelligence on terror groups such as the Islamic State of Khorasan Province, and Pakistan headquartered Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba. It was decided that all terror groups and terrorists designated by the 1267 UNSC committee should be denied sanctuary or shelter to operate from Afghanistan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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