S Jaishankar to make maiden visit to Moscow since Russia-Ukraine war, to hold talks with Lavrov

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will make his maiden visit to Moscow since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war and will hold talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.

"Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will have talks with External Affairs Minister of India S Jaishankar on November 8 in Moscow," Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"The ministers will discuss the current state of bilateral relations and the international agenda," she added.

There, however, is no official announcement from India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on the proposed visit of Jaishankar.

Since the Ukraine conflict began in February this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a number of times.

In a phone conversation with Zelenskyy earlier this month, Modi had said that there can be "no military solution" and that India is ready to contribute to any peace efforts.

At a bilateral meeting with Putin in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on September 16, he had told Putin that "today's era is not of war".

India, notably, has been maintaining that the crisis must be resolved through diplomacy and dialogue.

Ukraine battles intensify as Russia eyes space retaliation

Meanwhile, the Moscow-appointed authorities have fled the capital of southern Ukraine's Kherson region along with tens of thousands of residents as Ukrainian forces attacked Russia's hold on the city on Thursday while fighting also intensified in the country's east.

Amid the battles, a senior Russian official warned that Western commercial satellites used for military purposes in support of Ukraine were a "legitimate target for a retaliatory strike".

Ukraine has pushed ahead with an offensive to reclaim the Kherson region and its capital of the same name, which Russian forces captured during the first days of a war now in its ninth month.