Russia moves again to join with China and India despite their trust issues

Russia’s fresh bid to revive a strategic triangle with China and India as a counterbalance to the Western-led international order faces headwinds given the deep-seated distrust between the two Asian powers, according to observers.

However, United States President Donald Trump and his aggressive and unpredictable policies could be the catalyst to bring the three together, one analyst says.

The assessment was made as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov objected to what he described as Nato’s attempt to draw India into “anti-China” efforts, and reaffirmed Moscow’s hope for India and China to restore a three-way mechanism that has been in limbo since the deadly 2020 China-India border dispute.

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Xi Jinping says China, Russia have ‘special responsibility’ to stand up to power politics

“Now that India and the People’s Republic of China are reaching an understanding on de-escalating tensions along their shared border, the moment has arrived to revitalise RIC,” Russia’s top diplomat said at a Eurasian security forum in the Russian city of Perm last week, referring to the Russia-India-China framework.

It is not the first time since violence broke out at the China-India border in May 2020 that Russia has tried to push for a resumption of the trilateral mechanism. The border dispute largely froze bilateral ties until a disengagement agreement was reached in October last year in a bid to de-escalate tensions between the world’s two most populous nations and normalise the relationship.

Russia brokered two high-level meetings between senior defence and foreign policy officials of China and India months after their countries’ border conflict broke out in 2020, a move that highlighted Moscow’s influence within the RIC mechanism.

Russian President Vladimir Putin also tried to push for a leaders’ summit of the two countries when he had separate talks with his Chinese and Indian counterparts in December 2021, before his country invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

South China Morning Post