Indonesia president-elect Prabowo says seeks stronger ties with ‘great friend’ Russia

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JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia’s President-elect Prabowo Subianto said his upcoming administration would maintain ties with “great friend” Russia after meeting President Vladimir Putin, adding that he hoped for stronger cooperation on defence, energy and education.

Prabowo, who is currently defence minister, is set to take over the presidency from Joko Widodo in October. He is currently on a trip to Moscow and met Putin on Wednesday.

“We consider Russia as a great friend,” he said in a statement from the defence ministry.

“I would like to continue to maintain and enhance this relationship. In our history we remember Russia has always helped us in many aspects when we were in difficulties.”

Prabowo also expressed his intent to continue a partnership in defence and nuclear energy, and to send Indonesian students to Russia to study medicine.

The trip to Moscow comes months after Prabowo went to Beijing to meet President Xi Jinping to affirm Indonesia’s “policy of friendship” with China.

Prabowo has said he will forge ties with any country, be it China or the United States, in his non-alignment foreign policy.

Putin was quoted by Russian state news agency TASS Russia as saying Russia was ready to “scale up supplies of agricultural products, implement investment projects in the field of energy, transport, and infrastructure.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was quoted by TASS as saying that Indonesia’s role in the war in Ukraine, which Putin calls a special operation, is “growing significantly nowadays”.

Last year, Prabowo proposed a peaceful settlement for the war that includes a ceasefire and a demilitarised zone in an address to the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore.

(Reporting by Stanley Widianto; editing by Miral Fahmy)