After defending Quad in US, Jaishankar to chair BRICS meet with China, Russia foreign ministers on Tuesday

Moscow over the past few months repeatedly conveyed to New Delhi its displeasure over the ‘Quad’ alliance

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will hold a virtual meeting with his counterparts from other BRICS nations, including Wang Yi of China and Sergey Lavrov of Russia, on Tuesday, just days after his visit to the United States, where he strongly defended the ‘Quad’.

Jaishankar will chair the virtual meeting of the BRICS Foreign Ministers, who will discuss the Covid-19 pandemic situation, the need for strengthening and reforming the multilateral system with a view to enhancing its capacity to effectively address the diverse challenges of the time and to adapt them to contemporary realities, the Ministry of External Affairs stated in a press-release issued in New Delhi.

Moscow over the past few months repeatedly conveyed to New Delhi its displeasure over the ‘Quad’, a coalition forged by India, Australia, Japan and the United States to counter the hegemonic aspirations of China in the Indo-Pacific region. Jaishankar, who was on a visit to the US from May 24 to 28, tacitly dismissed Russia’s views on India’s participation in Quad.

“You know at some stage, we have to put the Cold War behind us. It is only those who are stuck in the Cold War who cannot understand Quad,” the External Affairs Minister told journalists after his meeting with the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Joe Biden of the US, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan and Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia had a virtual summit on March 12 to elevate the ‘Quad’, which the four nations had revived in 2017 to build a coalition of democracies to counter China.

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The stand-offs between the Indian Army and Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Doklam in western Bhutan in June-August 2017 and in eastern Ladakh since April-May 2020 took the relations between New Delhi and Beijing to a new low. strategic convergence with the US to counter China in the Indo-Pacific however grew, particularly over the past few months. It, however, caused wrinkles in India’s relations with Russia.

Lavrov had in December 2020 called the Quad a ‘divisive’ and ‘exclusivist’ tool, which was being used by the US to implement its “devious policy” of engaging New Delhi in games against China as well as to undermine Russia’s close partnership with India.

Moscow’s envoy to New Delhi, Nikolay Kudashev, last month said that the Indo-Pacific strategy of the western nations was aimed at reviving the Cold War-era thinking and Cold War-era structures.

“Quad today fills a very important gap that has emerged in contemporary times, where there are global or regional requirements, which cannot be filled by a single country. It cannot even be filled by one bilateral relationship, and which is not being addressed at the multilateral level,” Jaishankar told journalists in Washington D.C.

He is now set to join his Chinese and Russian counterparts in the BRICS (a bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) conclave to discuss “global and regional issues of concern, sustainable development, countering terrorism” and people-to-people cooperation. Brazil’s Foreign Minister Carlos Alberto Franco França, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Grace Naledi Mandisa Pandor, will also join the virtual meeting.