Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin talked of “a special relationship defined by special trust” as President Pratibha Patil met him on Friday.

He stressed that India and Russia should stay in close touch on reform of the UN Security Council, in context of India’s candidature for a permanent seat in the Council.

Putin also dwelt on the subject of cooperation in energy security. Regional issues like terrorism and Afghanistan also came up in the talks, as did PM Manmohan Singh’s forthcoming visit to Russia in December.

A hint of the changing global institutional framework in which India and Russia must sustain their ties was provided in a report on Friday in The Moscow Times, the only English language newspaper in the city and circulated free amongst expatriates and diplomats.

Russia, which felt hard done by the IMF in the 1990s, is seen to be keenly conscious of establishing its zone of influence in the former Soviet Union, and also to leverage its economic and military power to assert its deserved place at the high table of global institutions.

So, even as the optics of Patil’s visit to Moscow cleaved constantly to the long history of bilateral closeness, the point was made many times over these two days that this must be substantiated by progress on economic, energy and security issues.