Rewind: The return of Russia-India-China troika

Modi’s China visit revives talk of RIC, signalling a new phase in India’s strategic balancing, but the question remains — is it a troika of convenience or a pillar of multipolarity

By Dr Anudeep Gujjeti

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to China, almost after seven years, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, underscores a remarkable recalibration in Asian geopolitics. In Tianjin, Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the SCO summit. This comes as Beijing and New Delhi cautiously thaw relations after border clashes, even as Washington unsettles India with punitive tariffs and overtures to Pakistan.

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India suddenly finds itself simultaneously re-engaging a long-time adversary and questioning a key partner. The juxtaposition raises an important question: Are we witnessing the tentative revival of a Russia-India-China (RIC) troika, potentially reshaping Asia’s strategic order?

An Old Troika Reimagined?

The RIC idea traces back to the late 1990s, a period when the United States loomed as an unchallenged superpower in a unipolar world order. It was first mooted by Yevgeny Primakov, Russia’s Foreign Minister (1996-98) and later Prime Minister, as a means to counterbalance the US dominance on the global stage. Primakov envisioned a “strategic triangle” linking Moscow with an old partner, New Delhi, and a new friend, Beijing, thereby pivoting these three Eurasian giants toward a multipolar world not dictated by Washington.

The geopolitical context of that era gave impetus to Primakov’s proposal. In 1999, NATO’s air war in Serbia, including the accidental bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade, and US sanctions on India after its 1998 nuclear tests, galvanised all three nations’ sense of strategic vulnerability. Moscow saw an opening to regain global influence by uniting with two rising Asian powers. This convergence of interests drove Primakov’s RIC idea as a concert of three major powers that could “collectively counterbalance US influence” and champion a more equitable global order.

The format initially grew through Track-II diplomacy, as academics and think tanks from the three countries built trust and generated policy ideas. The first meeting of RIC foreign ministers took place in September 2002 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. Thereafter, RIC foreign ministers began consulting regularly, transforming the concept into a functioning trilateral mechanism. During the 2000s, the RIC format expanded in scope. Between 2002 and 2021, RIC held 18 Foreign Ministerial-level meetings, steadily building high-level momentum.

The trilateral held standalone ministerial meetings and established working groups to explore practical cooperation in areas such as agriculture, disaster management, public health, and energy. Rotating meetings in cities such as Bengaluru, Moscow, Wuhan and others fostered an ethos of equal partnership. By 2006, the engagement had reached the summit level, albeit informally, and the first RIC leaders’ summit was held on the margins of the G8 summit in St Petersburg in July 2006. Similar meetings were held in the 2018 and 2019 G20 summits. Their very occurrence signalled that RIC had matured from a mere idea into a recognised diplomatic forum aimed at reforming the international order and strengthening multilateral governance.

Strategic Drift

Despite a promising start, the RIC grouping struggled to achieve concrete outcomes in its first two decades. The three countries’ differing priorities and lingering bilateral suspicions, especially the India-China rivalry, meant it lacked a substantive common agenda. At the same time, all three maintained ties with the US and its allies, diluting the urgency of RIC cooperation. By the late 2010s, RIC meetings had become routine, producing joint statements high on principle and low on action. Internal tensions further undercut the forum. China’s rise and its increasingly assertive posture unsettled both India and Russia, who grew wary of being junior partners in a China-dominated trio.

Several external shocks also stalled RIC’s momentum. The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 forced diplomatic schedules online and disrupted multilateral diplomacy. More importantly, mid-2020 saw the outbreak of a deadly border clash between India and China in the Galwan Valley, the worst Sino-Indian conflict in decades, which plunged relations to a nadir. India and China froze virtually all bilateral dialogue, and RIC meetings were promptly suspended.

The last RIC foreign ministers’ meeting took place virtually in November 2021, after which the forum entered a deep freeze. Each country turned its focus to urgent priorities. China and the US were locked in trade and tech tensions. India prioritised managing the border crisis and the pandemic, and Russia was about to ignite a new confrontation with the West in Ukraine. RIC, never a tightly knit partnership to begin with, gradually became dormant.

Reviving the Old Troika

In this current decade, shifting geopolitical currents are breathing new life into Primakov’s old idea. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, invoking Primakov’s legacy, noted that the troika format had convened “more than 20 times at the ministerial level” since its launch, and argued that “the time has come to revive this RIC troika” now that India and China have reached an understanding on calming their border dispute.

Speaking at a forum honoring Primakov in Moscow, Lavrov expressed genuine interest in resuming RIC’s work and pointed out that the mechanism had previously brought together not just the countries’ diplomats but also their economic and financial policymakers. For Russia, internationally isolated by Western sanctions over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, RIC offers a low-cost platform to counter political and economic isolation. Moscow sees strategic value in showcasing that it still has heavyweight partners, thereby pushing back at US-led efforts to ostracise Russia. A reinvigorated RIC would also dovetail with President Vladimir Putin’s broader push for a “Greater Eurasia” coalition that can withstand Western pressure.

Beijing views a robust RIC as another vehicle to promote its vision of “a multipolar world order” and a more balanced global governance system in which the Global South’s voice is strengthened. In July 2025, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian publicly stated that China is ready to work with Russia and India to advance trilateral cooperation, noting that RIC collaboration “serves the interests of the three countries and contributes to regional and global peace, security, stability and progress.”

The RIC triangle complements forums like BRICS and SCO that China champions as alternatives to Western-centric groupings. Crucially, a renewed RIC also gives China a direct channel to engage India on its own terms. With US-China rivalry intensifying, Chinese strategists worry about India drifting into a ‘China-containment’ camp led by Washington. Reviving RIC is seen as a way for Beijing to allay New Delhi’s concerns and undercut the formation of any anti-China coalition.

In other words, by drawing India into a cooperative framework alongside Russia, China hopes to soften India’s alignment with US-led initiatives like the Quad. The symbolism of President Xi Jinping meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Putin at the SCO summit in Tianjin, reinforces the message of Asian powers closing ranks in the face of Western pressure.

Recent months have indeed seen initial steps toward thawing India-China relations, which is a prerequisite for any meaningful RIC revival. After the border standoff, it took years for trust to even partially recover. An initial breakthrough came on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, in late 2024, where Modi and Xi met face-to-face for the first time since the border clash. That meeting, followed by rounds of diplomatic talks, yielded confidence-building measures, resumption of direct flights and border trade, the reopening of pilgrimage routes to Tibet, and accelerated disengagement of troops at remaining flashpoints.

This easing of bilateral tensions has essentially removed one of the biggest roadblocks to reconvening RIC. With Beijing and New Delhi now inching toward normalisation, Moscow’s invitation to resume trilateral talks “soon” is finding a more receptive audience than at any time in the past few years.

Shifting Strategic Landscape

The renewed interest in the RIC troika cannot be understood in isolation from the broader strategic upheavals of the 2020s. Foremost among these is the deterioration of India’s relations with the US under President Donald Trump’s second term.

Long viewed as a cornerstone of the US Indo-Pacific strategy, India has instead found itself on the receiving end of Washington’s protectionist and transactional impulses since 2025. In a striking departure from prior US policy, the Trump administration imposed punitive tariffs on India, hiking duties on Indian goods to 50 per cent, to ‘punish’ New Delhi for ‘funding’ the Ukraine war by buying cheap Russian oil.

This blunt instrument of economic coercion shocked policymakers in New Delhi and strained US-India ties to their worst state in decades. To New Delhi’s alarm, US also began courting India’s arch-rival, Pakistan, in parallel, restoring military aid to Islamabad and even hosting Pakistan’s army chief in the White House, moves that India saw as a grievous affront after years of US neglect of Pakistan’s support for anti-India militancy. Together, these steps have eroded Indian trust in the US as a reliable partner, prompting New Delhi to look more seriously at alternative alignments. The RIC now shares a concern about US sanctions and tariffs being wielded against them.

Renewed Relevance

However, expectations should be tempered by RIC’s historical limitations. The ‘strategic triangle’ has always been something of a marriage of convenience, uniting very different powers with diverging worldviews and disputes. The same obstacles that hampered RIC in the past remain today. Chief among them is the trust deficit between India and China, which cannot be erased overnight by a few diplomatic gestures. New Delhi will resist any arrangement that compromises its ties with the West or endorses Chinese dominance. Beijing, for its part, may find India an unwilling partner if its overtures are seen as tactical rather than genuine accommodation on core disputes.

Moreover, India’s involvement in the US-led Quad, however shaky that partnership looks at the moment, is a thorn in China’s side and a reminder that India is hedging on both fronts. In economic terms, the asymmetry between China and the other two RIC members is starker than ever. India and Russia both trade far more with China than with each other, and India fears being economically overwhelmed by its giant neighbour. These enduring realities mean that the RIC idea will likely remain fragile. The trio may find common ground in opposing Western sanctions or calling for multipolarity, but when it comes to concrete policy coordination, progress could be halting.

Still, the very fact that Russia and China are courting India, and New Delhi is responding, highlights a turning point in the international environment. Washington’s aggressive unilateralism, tariffs, sanctions, and fragile alliances has inadvertently catalysed what Primakov envisioned decades ago: A close partnership among Russia, India, and China born not out of ideological affinity but out of shared grievances and pragmatic need. In a polarised world, the old troika is being reimagined as a potential pillar of a multipolar order, one that could lend each of its members greater bargaining power on the global stage.

Whether RIC truly materialises as a consequential force is yet to be seen. Even if it only results in modest diplomatic coordination, its revival sends a clear signal. As India’s balancing act between East and West continues, the message to Washington is clear: Relationships in the 21st century are not exclusive, and a power like India will keep all its options open.

RIC Timeline: From Primakov’s Vision to Tianjin

Late 1990s – Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov floats the idea of a Russia-India-China (RIC) ‘strategic triangle’ to balance US dominance in a unipolar world

1999 – NATO’s bombing of Serbia and US sanctions on India after its nuclear tests bring Moscow, New Delhi, and Beijing closer in their sense of vulnerability

2002 – First meeting of RIC foreign ministers takes place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, marking the forum’s official launch

2006 – The first informal RIC leaders’ summit is held in St Petersburg on the margins of the G8 summit. Over the next decade, ministerial meetings expand cooperation to areas such as agriculture, disaster management, health, and energy

The obstacles that hampered RIC in the past remain today —chief among them is the trust deficit between India and China, and these enduring realities mean that the RIC idea will likely remain fragile

2018–2019 – RIC leaders meet on the sidelines of G20 summits, symbolising the grouping’s acceptance as part of high-level global diplomacy

2020–2021 – The Covid-19 pandemic, coupled with the deadly Galwan Valley clash between India and China, pushes RIC into a deep freeze. The last foreign ministers’ meeting is held virtually in November 2021

2024–2025 – Modi and Xi meet in Kazan, easing tensions. At the SCO summit in Tianjin, RIC discussions resurface with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov invoking Primakov’s legacy and arguing that “the time has come to revive this RIC troika”

(The author is Assistant Professor, Symbiosis Law School, Pune, and Young Leader, Pacific Forum, USA)