Moscow and China-India Relations: Understanding the Complexities beyond Eurasia

The trilateral grouping of Russia, India and China (RIC) has for long been one of the most significant frameworks bringing together three of Eurasia’s biggest economies. Owing to its traditional partnership with India and the ideological partnership/friendship with China, Moscow has maneuvered RIC in order to ensure hope of Eurasian unity against the West. Such a role has served Moscow well. Russia has always sought to ensure that India and China remain engaged in the RIC dialogue, even as calls of the mechanism becoming outdated have emerged.  

Russia’s RIC focus has allowed it to maintain relevance in other multilateral platforms as well such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as here, stable India-China ties have worked in Moscow’s favor. Importantly, as opposed to China, India has emerged as a more critical partner multilaterally allowing Moscow a range of opportunities with the rest of the world and especially the West. China’s own rivalry with the United States (U.S.) has limited this support that it could have otherwise extended to Moscow. For India, beyond their traditional defense partnership, Russia has emerged as critical to its ‘Connect Central Asia’ plan, especially as Chinese footprint in the region has continued to extensively grow. Owing to this complementarity, India’s active presence in the RIC has remained, even as Delhi’s ties with China have taken hits. This webinar brings together experts from China, India, and Russia to discuss the complexities of China-India-Russia trilateral. It would also aim to examine to what extent Russia plays a significant role in influencing China-India relations, bilaterally and regionally.  

Objectively, this webinar will broadly address the following questions in particular:  

1. How will Russia influence the future China-India relations, particularly within forums such as the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS), Russia-India-China (RIC), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), where all three states are major stakeholders and fellow members?

2. How has Russia, and the Russia-Ukraine war, played a role in India-China dynamics? What are Moscow’s underlying objectives in the region, and how do New Delhi and Beijing fit into its regional and global calculus? 

3. Does Moscow have a role to play in the India-China boundary dispute or negotiations? How will Delhi and Beijing’s changing dynamics with Russia impact the future of their border dispute?  

This event will be moderated by Dr. Jagannath Panda, Head of the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs (SCSA-IPA) at the ISDP.

Read more about the webinar and register here