Putin keen to hold trilateral summit with Modi, Xi; India remains non-committal

After 2019, when the last such trilateral meet was held, India’s relations with China hit a new low over the military stand-off along the LAC

Russia has proposed a trilateral summit among its President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping – notwithstanding China’s continued belligerence all along its disputed boundary with India. However, New Delhi remained non-committal on the proposal.

Putin had a videoconference with Xi on Wednesday and one of the issues the two leaders discussed was the prospects of trilateral cooperation within the framework of the Russia-India-China (RIC). They “agreed to continue exchanging opinions in this regard and to endeavour to hold the next summit within the RIC framework in the near future”, Putin’s aide, Yury Ushakov, was quoted by Russia’s TASS news agency on Thursday.

New Delhi, however, remained non-committal on the proposal from Moscow.

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Arindam Bagchi, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), on Thursday recalled the last virtual meeting of the Russian, Indian and Chinese Foreign Ministers on November 26, but declined to confirm any further development on the RIC.

He was responding to questions from journalists about the possibility of Modi, Putin and Xi holding a trilateral summit, as indicated by the aide of the Russian President in Moscow.

Modi, Putin and Xi had held the second RIC summit on the sideline of the G-20 conclave in Buenos Aires in December 2018 – almost 12 years after the then leaders of the three nations had held the first trilateral meeting. This was followed by the third RIC summit on the sideline of the G-20 meet in Osaka in June 2019.

The summit, however, could not be held in 2020 and 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world and India’s relations with China hit a new low over the military stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between the two nations in eastern Ladakh.

The Russian President held the videoconference with the Chinese President less than 10 days after he visited New Delhi and had a bilateral summit with the Prime Minister of India.

The Modi-Putin summit in New Delhi on December 6 was preceded by the India-Russia 2+2 Dialogue, held between foreign and defence ministers of the two sides. The back-to-back engagements saw India underlining its “enhanced requirement” of military and military-technical cooperation with Russia to meet the security challenges it was confronted with, particularly the aggression by China along the LAC in eastern Ladakh.

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The proposal for a trilateral Putin-Modi-Xi summit came amid the continuing stand-off between the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army along the LAC – the de facto boundary between the two nations in the western sector.

The stand-off started in April-May 2020, when the Indian Army had to deploy additional troops in response to the Chinese PLA’s move to amass a large number of troops near the LAC, seen as an obvious attempt to unilaterally change the status quo along the disputed boundary and the push the line westward. It reached a flashpoint on June 15, 2020, when 20 Indian Army soldiers and at least four Chinese PLA personnel were killed in a violent clash at Galwan Valley in eastern Ladakh.

The Modi-Putin summit on December 6 saw the two sides agreeing to intensify cooperation among Russia, India and China within the RIC framework to promote common approaches to pressing issues on the global and regional agenda, according to a joint statement issued both in New Delhi and Moscow after the meeting.