Prelims Focus 8th December 2025

08/12/2025

23 1 minute read

RELOS Agreement

In News: The Reciprocal Exchange of Logistic Support (Relos) Agreement with India has been ratified by the lower house of parliament of Russia.

Relos resembles the logistics agreements that India has signed with such countries as the US, UK, Japan, Australia, France, Singapore, South Korea and Vietnam.
India-Russia Mutually Advantageous Exchange of Logistical Support (Relos) Agreement is a military logistics agreement that is bilateral allowing military aircraft, ships, as well as military personnel of both nations to utilize the bases of each other to refuel, maintain, acquire spares, train, exercise, and undertake humanitarian missions and disaster relief.
It simplifies the logistics as it involves a good deal of paperwork, faster support, and enables rolling settlement of costs.
It also has mutual access to the airspace of each other as well as ports, which will give India strategic access to the Arctic region via the Northern Sea Route where Russia is heavily armed.
To Russia, Relos gives access to facilities of the Indian Oceans, and Russia can continue to have access to the worldwide markets even with the western sanctions and projection of power in Asia without the expensive overseas bases.

Digital Hub for Reference and Unique Virtual Address (DHRUVA)

In News: The Department of Posts (DoP) of the Ministry of Communications has suggested Digital Hub for Reference and Unique Virtual Address (DHRUVA), an interoperable, standardized and user-friendly Digital Address System to India.

What is DHRUVA?

An address label scheme nationalized, which creates virtual, Uniform Personal Identifier (UPI)-like address labels like name at entity, which act as proxies of physical locations.
The system is developed as part of its Digital Public Infrastructure plans and will enable private companies to join it.
The fundamental idea here is the idea of Address-as-a-Service (AaaS) – the collection of services that relate to address data management to facilitate secure and consent-based sharing of location information.