India and Russia are rapidly becoming close allies. This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Indian President Manmohan Singh. Both leaders spoke very positively of the meeting.

“Ours is a strategic partnership that has stood the test of time,” Singh said. “Through our discussions today, we have consolidated and strengthened our engagement in different fields.”

Russia and India have agreed to develop closer positions on foreign policy and boost bilateral trade, and have decided to cooperate in three important areas.

One of these is military hardware. During the meeting, Putin and Singh outlined a $600 million project to jointly develop a multi-role transport aircraft. Just under a month ago, Moscow and New Dehli signed an intergovernmental agreement to jointly develop a fifth-generation strike fighter. This $8 billion project will “match if not equal the (Lockheed Martin) F-22 (Raptor),” one Indian official said, comparing it to the U.S. Air Force’s most advanced fighter.

India’s military is already packed with Russian equipment. India has even been allowed to manufacture key pieces of Russian military hardware on its own soil, including the latest Russian tank, the T-90, and the RD-33MK, perhaps the most advanced vector thrust engine in the world.

The second key area is space exploration. Russia and India have outlined plans for the two nations to cooperate in an unmanned lunar mission. The plan includes sending an unmanned laboratory to the moon in 2011 to 2012, a project that will allow a great amount of technology to be shared between the two countries and jointly developed. It also creates an ideological link between the countries as they share the lofty goal of reaching the moon for the first time. A joint space program also has strategic and military implications (for more information on this, see “Space Wars!” and “Who Will Win the Space Race?”).

A third area discussed at the meeting was energy cooperation. India already depends heavily on Russian oil. Now Russia and India are negotiating an agreement to build four nuclear power plants in southern India. Although the deal was not finalized, such energy cooperation will bind the two countries closer together.

Another highly significant aspect of the meeting is that bilateral ties were not the only subject discussed.

“I see big prospects in active ties on the trilateral format: Russia-India-China and on the four-sided bric format,” Putin said, referring to a group of large developing nations that includes Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Singh concurred: “In this increasingly interdependent world in which we live, we have an obligation to explore areas of convergence between Russia, India and China,” he said.

These agreements between Russia and India are only part of a broader alliance developing among the nations of the East. Watch for these nations, including Russia, China, India, Japan, Korea and others, to consolidate. To learn more about this alliance of nations and how it will affect the world, read “The Kings of the East.”