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MOSCOW, June 23-- The first joint Russian-Indian exercise, Indra-2017, is planned to be held in the fall in Russia's Eastern Military District, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Friday. "Military cooperation is an important component and pillar of Russian-Indian strategic interaction. A particularly important aspect of this cooperation is joint military exercises," Shoigu said at a meeting of the Russian-Indian intergovernmental commission on military-technical cooperation with Indian Minister of Defence Arun Jaitley. Such drills contribute to an increase of the prestige of the armed forces of the two countries and demonstrate the readiness of their defense departments to effectively counter modern challenges and threats, Shoigu said. Both sides stressed the big potential of the cooperation in the spheres of missile and naval technologies, aircraft construction, shipbuilding and modernization of the land forces equipment, according to a statement by the Russian Defense Ministry. A "Road map" of development of bilateral military cooperation between the two defense ministries and the final Protocol, aimed at the development of Russia-India relations in the military-technical sphere, were signed at the end of the Commission meeting, the statement said. | 
