Home Minister P Chidambaram met Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and discussed ways to strengthen Indo-Russian cooperation in hi-tech sector, besides sharing views on situation in Afghanistan. Mr. Chidambaram who is on a three-day visit to Russia, said in an informal interaction with the media last night that Russia has treaty obligations with Central Asian States bordering Afghanistan and is assessing the impact of a possible spill-over of instability across the border. Mr Ivanov who is the co-chairman of the Indo-Russian Joint Commission, said that Russia was anxious to launch hi-tech cooperation with India in the fields of civil aircraft and submarine productions. Earlier, during his talks with Russian Minister for Emergency Situations, Sergei Shoigu, the two countries agreed to closely cooperate to tackle natural and man-made calamities. Mr Shoigu recalled that India and Russia have a long record of ties in preventing disasters and emergency situations and in 2010, they inked an inter-governmental agreement on interaction in case of natural and man-made disasters. Russia has a state-of-the-art crisis control centre, which has highly mobile infrastructure that can airlift rescue and relief teams into any part of the country within hours. Mr. Chidambaram said, India, which has set up a National Disaster Management Authority, is also in the process of creation of such a crisis control centre.