New Delhi: The Indian Navy will hold an exercise, known as passage exercise, with Russia in the Bay of Bengal on September 4 and 5. The exercises are expected to increases inter-operability between India and Russia although they are expected to sign-on logistics pact later in 2020.
The Indian and Russian exercises happen at the same location where the Indian Navy and USS Nimitz, one of the largest warships in the world had passage exercises more than a month ago. Russia will be deploying two destroyers, Admiral Vinogradov and Admiral Tributs and Tanker Boris Butoma while India will deploy its destroyer Ranvijay, frigate-Sahyadri, corvette-Kiltan and Tanker-Shakti.
INDRA Exercises between the Army, Navy and Air Force of the two countries have been held since 2005. Joint Tri-Services Exercises are also being held once in two years since 2017. The last INDRA Tri-Services Exercise was held in India in December 2019.