Defence Secretary, retired Air Vice Marshal Sampath Thuyacontha, held talks in Moscow on Wednesday with Aleksander Nikolayevich Venediktov, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and State Advisor, the Island reported.
The meeting took place on the sidelines of the 1st International Forum on Security and the Annual Meeting of High Representatives for Security Issues, held in Moscow from May 26 to 29. Talks focused on strengthening defence ties and exploring new areas of collaboration in defence, security and military-technical cooperation, with the two sides also discussing opportunities for Sri Lanka to benefit from advanced military technology cooperation.
The Venediktov bilateral is the third senior engagement on Thuyacontha’s current Moscow trip. The Defence Secretary held earlier talks with Russian Deputy Defence Minister Vasily Osmakov on May 26 on training exchanges and former Sri Lankan military personnel serving in Russia, before delivering a speech at the same forum on May 29 framing the Indian Ocean as a “zone of peace”.
Engagement with Russia’s Security Council, rather than the Defence Ministry, signals a broadening of the bilateral channel. The Security Council is the consultative body advising President Vladimir Putin on national security, and military-technical cooperation under that umbrella typically extends to equipment, transfer of technology and training arrangements that fall outside ordinary defence-ministry contacts.
The week’s defence engagement runs parallel to a separate economic track that has produced a Sri Lanka–Russia railway cooperation MoU signed at the Kazan forum and, in Colombo, a Clingendael Institute and Pathfinder Foundation joint dialogue on Indian Ocean security cooperation on May 28.
