Russia moves again to join with China and India despite trust issues from border disputes

Name: Xi Jinping says China, Russia have ‘special responsibility’ to stand up to power politics
Uploaded: 2025-06-05T06:00:22.000Z
Duration: 4 min 7 s
Description: Xi Jinping says China, Russia have ‘special responsibility’ to stand up to power politics

Analysts say Trump’s tariffs and other policies could unite three countries but long-standing conflicts between them remain an obstacle

Reading Time:5 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (left), India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka on June 28, 2019. Attempts to reform a triumvirate against the US-led West face obstacles within and outside the trio. Photo: Sputnik/Reuters

Laura Zhou

Published: 2:00pm, 5 Jun 2025Updated: 4:08pm, 10 Jun 2025

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 that India and China could restore a three-way mechanism that has been in limbo since the deadly 2020 China-India border dispute.

04:07

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 [the Russia-India-China framework],” Lavrov told a Eurasian security forum in the Russian city of Perm last week.

It is not the first time that Russia has tried to push for a resumption of the trilateral mechanism after the deadly 2020 clash. The border dispute largely froze relations between India and China until a disengagement agreement was reached in October last year in a bid to de-escalate tensions and normalise the relationship.

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin also tried to push for a summit between the two countries when he had separate talks with his Chinese and Indian counterparts in December 2021.