There are more than 25000 Indian students studying across universities in Russia. The courses that are most popular are Medicine and Engineering amongst a host of others, stated a copy by The New Indian Express.

"There are more than 25,000 Indian students in Russia and the number is continuously increasing. In 2023 we issued more than 8,000 new visas for Indian students. We would hope that we would be able to sign an agreement with India, wherein, our degrees would be recognised in either country to make it suitable for professionals like doctors to begin practice without doing an additional course,'' said Russian Ambassador to India, Denis Alipov on Thursday, March 14.

It may be recalled that before USSR broke up into different nations, their degrees were recognised in India and many Indian students preferred to go to the USSR to study medicine.

Meanwhile, the Russian government recently hosted a World Youth Festival (WYF) in Sochi, Russia, which had participants from over 100 countries and included a 360 member delegation from India. The last WYF was held in 2017.

"The Indian flag was amongst the most recognised flags at the event and Indian delegates were welcomed by local Russians with anecdotes of old films and songs,'' said Ambassador Alipov.

Russian Federation President, Vladimir Putin, while interaction with some members of the delegation had said, "India and Russia were all weather friends.''

The last high-level visit from India to Russia was of External Affairs Minister, Dr S Jaishankar in December last year where he also met President Putin and there was talk of the resumption of India Russian Summit this year, during which, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi could visit Moscow.