Border dispute: what’s at stake for Russia as it tries to mediate between China and India?

Beijing and New Delhi have held two high-level meetings in Moscow this month in a bid to defuse tensions

Russia hopes to be ‘main diplomatic broker’ within trilateral grouping but those efforts could be stymied if the rift deepens, observers say

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Indian army vehicles move along a highway leading to Ladakh at Gagangeer in Kashmir this week. Russia has stayed neutral in the long-running border dispute between China and India. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 12:30pm, 12 Sep 2020Updated: 11:27pm, 12 Sep 2020

Russia’s efforts to mediate in the China-India border dispute shows what is at stake for Moscow if the row worsens between the two nuclear-armed Asian neighbours, observers say.

Beijing and New Delhi have held two high-level meetings this month, both in Moscow on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) gathering, in a bid to defuse tensions over a military stand-off along their frontier in the Himalayas that began in early May.

The latest was on Thursday, when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar agreed to improve mutual trust to ensure peace along their disputed border, and to avoid any action that could escalate the situation – though there was no mention of when troops would be withdrawn.

It came after the Chinese and Indian defence ministers, Wei Fenghe and Rajnath Singh, failed to break the deadlock in Moscow last week.

The foreign ministers had a new urgency to de-escalate tensions and the military build-up on both sides of the border after the latest incident on Monday, when the two sides accused each other of opening fire near Pangong Lake in Ladakh – the first time shots have been fired on the frontier since 1975.

(From left) Indian, Russian and Chinese foreign ministers Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Sergei Lavrov and Wang Yi meet in Moscow on Thursday. Photo: Xinhua