JAKARTA – Naval forces of Indonesia and Russia began their first joint military training drills in the Java Sea on Nov 4, the Indonesian Navy said, a move analysts say shows the South-east Asian country’s willingness to befriend any country.

       The joint exercise comes as Indonesia’s newly inaugurated President Prabowo Subianto pledges closer ties with Russia on defence, in a bid to forge ties with any country as part of his country’s long-held non-alignment foreign policy.

       The drills will take place in the Java Sea near Indonesia’s Surabaya city, east of the capital Jakarta, from Nov 4 to 8 after four Russian warships arrived on location on Nov 3, navy spokesman I Made Wira Hady Arsanta Wardhana said on Nov 4.

       “The joint drills are an actualisation of an international partnership between the Indonesian and the Russian navies that’s been constantly good,” he said in a statement, providing no further details on what the exercise entailed.

       The statement quoted a Russian delegation representative as saying that the exercise was designed for the two navies to exchange knowledge.

       The Russian embassy in Jakarta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

       Russia’s Ambassador to Indonesia Sergey Tolchenov said in October in an interview with Russian state news agency Tass that the drills were the “first large-scale naval exercises of Russia and Indonesia”.

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       Analysts say the drills signal Indonesia’s more active willingness to befriend any country.

       “This can mean that Indonesia wants to work with everybody,” international relations professor Yohanes Sulaiman said.

       He added that there were still questions around Mr Prabowo’s grand strategy in foreign policy and that the drills may be Russia’s way of showing that it still has friends.

       Mr Prabowo described Russia as a “great friend” when he went to Moscow in July.

       Indonesia has held military exercises with other countries. It has held the annual Super Garuda Shield drills with the US since 2006 and the 2024 edition featured more than 4,500 personnel and took place for two weeks. REUTERS