When the late Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov proposed a Russia–India–China (RIC) strategic triangle during his December 1998 visit to New Delhi, it was generally perceived as a lofty dream of an orientalist scholar. His idea was meant to create a Eurasian axis capable of resisting American unilateralism.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ugly reality of a unipolar world, led by American predominance, had dawned. As was evident since the first Gulf War of 1990, this new era was marked by the US skirting the United Nations in directly responding to international crisis, though with mixed results.

The RIC of 1998 was, of course, very different. This post-Soviet and pre-Putin Russia was yet to stabilise, while India was struggling with the diplomatic fallout of its nuclear tests. The Chinese economy, still valued as under one trillion dollars, had suffered its worst-of-a-century Yangtze floods while also coping up with the pressures of the East Asian financial crisis.

However, it did not take much time for the RIC to start their quasi-formal foreign ministers’ meetings at the UN General Assembly from 2002. Decades later, thanks to President Donald Trump’s trade and tariff wars during his first term in office, this ‘triangle’ briefly managed a flicker of life through multiple trilateral summits –  Buenos Aires (2018), Bishkek and Osaka (2019) – leading to speculations about its game-changing possibilities.

RIC, though, was soon to be pushed into oblivion by the pandemic, India-China border clashes of 2020, and the then burgeoning Modi-Trump friendship leading to India’s greater proximity with the western world.

Like in the case during President Trump’s first term in office, the last seven months of his second term in office have witnessed even more of the same happening on both sides: Trump reigniting his tariff wars and RIC rekindling its axis. Trump’s mercurial tariffs and punishing sanctions have now set the stage for the ‘no-limit’ partnership of Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping opening up to embrace the Indian Prime Minister as well in the fold.

In all likelihood, the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin, at the end of this month, is likely to witness a revival, even if nominal or symbolic, of the RIC strategic triangle.

However, it is worthwhile to note that the RIC has changed a lot between the first and second terms of the Trump presidency, which will also influence their embryonic strategic bonhomie.

Placed below are five compelling reasons that explain why the revival of the Russia–India–China strategic triangle is no longer a fantasy but a plausible reality of 21st-century geopolitics and why, unlike before, it is likely to survive and sustain with far-reaching consequences.

1. Primakov, the dreamer

Trained as an orientalist and economist, and a well-known journalist and intellectual of the Soviet era, Primakov had emerged as Mikhail Gorbachev’s head of Soviet intelligence (KGB, later SVR) during the 1991-1996 period. Subsequently, he was appointed as the Russian Foreign Minister (1996-1998), only to be soon elevated as the Prime Minister (1998-1999) under President Boris Yeltsin.

As a response to the American unipolar impulses during the 1990s, Primakov’s RIC vision was rooted in promoting multipolarity. Back then, the world had witnessed Washington’s growing disregard for international norms and institutions, including the United Nations, vis, toppling regimes, expanding NATO, dictating trade rules, and so on.

An RIC Strategic Triangle, he believed, would be a potent counterbalance to contain American hegemonic impulses.

Fast forward to 2025, President Trump’s imperial demeanour is once again fueling the US aversion towards various international institutions and arrangements, in the process, pushing multipolarity under stress. However, what is different today is that Russia, India, and China together not only account for over 35 percent of the world population but also nearly 28 percent of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms.

China has, meanwhile, emerged as the second most powerful nation. Russia, for its part, has survived three-plus years of the war with Ukraine that has seen the US and its allies arming the latter and sanctioning Moscow. India has since come to be the fastest-growing amongst the major economies of the world.

Primakov’s dream no longer feels like a counterfactual; rather, it looks like common sense.

2. Brick-building of the past

Starting from 2002, the UN General Assembly sessions saw the trilateral parleys among the RIC foreign ministers gradually expanding to cooperation in sectors of public health, agriculture, disaster relief, and so on.

Trump’s first term began with the US accusing Russian interference in its 2016 presidential elections, the US Congress passing the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) in 2017, and launching airstrikes on Syria against the Russia-backed regime of President Assad.

China had faced increased tariffs on its exports to the US while the US had also increased Freedom of Navigation Operations in the South China Sea and initiated a ban on Huawei and other Chinese firms from US networks, while also arming Taiwan. But the Trump-Modi duo igniting friendship had seen India becoming a Major Défence Partner of the US in 2016, and the intensification of the Malabar naval exercises.

Result? Unlike China, India’s imports of Russian S-400 air defence systems did not attract the CAATSA sanctions.

Nevertheless, the first effort to upgrade the RIC strategic triangle was made at the Buenos Aires G20 summit of December 2018. However, India sought to balance this first leader-level trilateral of Putin, Modi, and Xi by initiating a parallel Japan–America–India (JAI) trilateral summit.

Prime Minister Modi convened this along with Shinzo Abe and Donald Trump, and they asserted their shared commitment to ‘free and open Indo-Pacific,’ which made them look like a mini-Quad minus-Australia. The Quad, incidentally, had also been revived in 2017.

With Abe resigning on health grounds in 2020 and the newly-elected US President Joe Biden institutionalising the Quad summits, JAI faded with time. It is, however, noteworthy that the JAI engagements was mentioned in Prime Minister Modi’s speeches, with the arrangement continuing through trilateral official level talks in various multilateral settings.

The brick building in the RIC, in comparison, survived better. The very fact that New Delhi could sit comfortably in both formulations showed how far Primakov’s vision for a multipolar world had survived as their shared priority.

Leaving the JAI behind, this momentum of the RIC strategic triangle was to snowball in June 2019 with two back-to-back trilateral meetings, first in Bishkek at the SCO summit, and then, just a fortnight later, at the Osaka G20 summit. Two RIC summits in one month were enough to ignite speculation about RIC presenting itself as a Eurasian counterweight to the G7 leadership, with the potential to recast global governance processes.

However, commentators were also calling it a strategic triangle where each of the three was exploring the means to round off the ‘sharp edges’ of their RIC triangle that suffered from mutual disjunctions. Externally as well, the RIC was soon to face serious existential challenges[1] .

3. Pandemic, Galwan and Trump 2.0

The format of the RIC foreign ministers meeting continued for some more time. Sergei Lavrov, Sushma Swaraj and Wang Yi met in Wuzhen near Shanghai in February 2019. Their last meeting in person, the 17th round, happened in March 2020 in Sochi (Russia) between Lavrov, S. Jaishankar, and Wang Yi, and their last trilateral meeting, and the 18th round, took place virtually in November 2021.

Starting from late 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic froze normal global diplomatic interactions and visits. Mere survival was to become the utmost symbol of success. Worse, the India-China border clash at Galwan in June 2020, which killed 20 Indian soldiers, plunged their bilateral relations to their lowest ebb.

The next four years saw heavy forward military deployments from both sides, besides major constraints placed on trade and people-to-people relations.

Meanwhile, from 2017, Trump’s revival of the Quadrilateral Security Framework or the Quad (with Australia, Japan, and India) had seen India’s ‘balancing’ act, which also coincided with PM Modi’s strong personal chemistry with President Trump. The RIC was then as good as dead, though the Ukraine war enabled Putin and Xi to shift the focus to their bilateral relationship and build their so-called ‘no limit’ partnership.

Trump’s second term was to see India becoming a target of his tariff hikes, which have since been pushing India back into the RIC fold. In 2018, President Trump had also slapped 25 per cent tariffs on steel and 10 per cent on aluminium. By 2019, the US had withdrawn India’s benefits flowing from the Generalised System of Preferences. But the intensity of Trump’s push in these last seven months has been far too rhetorical and sharp.

While Trump’s concerns about trade deficit are genuine, his selective, myopic, and foolhardy strategies of resolving these through a ‘America First’ approach have come as a rude wake-up call for his allies and adversaries alike. Though the Biden Administration was no different in terms of similar actions, it was relatively less whimsical and more institutionalised.

Plus, the Biden Administration remained too deeply entwined with other geopolitical crisis points: the disastrous military withdrawal from its two decade long war against the Taliban, followed by his raising of a global coalition in support of Ukraine’s war. The aftereffects of the COVID pandemic also had its impact on this Administration, besides his own advancing age and health issues forcing him to withdraw from a second shy at the American presidency.

4. Changing Intra-RIC equations

Amongst others, the Ukraine war had upended India’s energy map. In 2021, Russia supplied less than 2 percent of India’s crude oil. By 2023, it had surged to around 37 per cent, or worth USD 46.5 billion. Their bilateral trade, which had hovered around USD 8-10 billion for a decade, has now crossed USD 65 billion.

India now imports about 1.6 million barrels per day of discounted Russian crude oil and exporting refined oil to European countries. This expanded interdependence has tied India’s economic stability to Russia’s fortunes and, for New Delhi, keeping Moscow engaged through platforms like RIC is not just strategic theatre — it is fuel (or energy) security.

India also provides a counterbalance to President Putin becoming overly dependent on China, and it serves India well not to lose its time-tested friend to China. The fact that President Putin is scheduled to visit to New Delhi for their annual bilateral summit before the end of this year has also added to the buildup for their RIC trilateral at Tianjin.

China, of course, has been importing Russian energy for a much longer time. Even as India’s purchases soar, China remains Russia’s biggest energy customer. In 2023, it imported 107 million tons of Russian crude, about 20 percent of its oil needs. The Power of Siberia pipeline delivered 22 bcm of gas in 2023, on track for 38 bcm by 2025.

Put simply, it underlines Russia’s dependence on India and China as captive markets for its energy products. Without India and China, Russia’s energy exports would have collapsed under Western sanctions. During the first year of the Ukraine invasion in February 2022, Russia faced over 13,000 sanctions. Its trade with Europe has shrunk dramatically. Russia needs RIC the most and has been most vocal in urging New Delhi and Beijing to revive it.

Historically, the Russian eagle has always kept its options between Europe and Asia, but today, Asia is no longer optional but imperative to Russia’s survival. It is Moscow’s bid for legitimacy — standing not as a pariah but alongside Asia’s two rising giants. For Moscow, RIC becomes more than symbolism; it is survival diplomacy.

But the game changer has clearly been the U-turn in India-China ties, where credit remains due to Russia’s initiatives. From the October 2024 Modi-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the 16th BRICS summit at Kazan, both India and China have kickstarted a spate of initiatives to normalise their relationship.

The fact that this year China is the host for the SCO meetings saw India’s National Security Advisor and Defence Minister visiting China in June, followed by Foreign Minister Dr S Jaishankar’s China visit in July. The Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi also visited New Delhi earlier this month. By the end of this month, PM Modi will be visiting China to attend the SCO summit in Tianjin, thereby setting the stage for their RIC summit.

It is in this backdrop that this RIC summit has been drawing speculative media headlines.

The thaw in India-China relations that has facilitated this as a possibility is real, even if both sides remain cautious. In recent months, both sides have agreed to resume border trade, restart the Kailash–Mansarovar Yatra pilgrimage, and restore direct flights, while India has initiated easing of visas for Chinese nationals, as also relaxing regulations for Chinese investments.

Bilateral trade, which had been sluggish in the last two years, has now revived with Indian exports to China grow by 20 percent during the April–July 2025 quarter. In a significant gesture, Beijing has resumed critical supplies of fertilisers like urea, rare earth minerals and magnets, and tunnel-boring machines.

With India-China tempers cooling, a multilateral RIC revival becomes less politically risky for New Delhi though it is bound to further annoy President Trump, who has lately been ratcheting up his anti-India rhetoric.

5. Competing for the Global South

Another game changing novel factor has been the rise of the Global South, with all three powers of RIC seeking out the mantle of its leadership. Their visions diverge — India as the bridge, China as the leader, Russia as the pole — but with shared commitment to obtain these nations a say in global governance, to amplify the narrative of Southern solidarity against Western dominance, and redressing the persistent North-South divide.

This has provided them one more purpose to build proximity and seen them cultivating the countries in the Global South:

-        India highlighted the issue during its G20 presidency in 2023, has since convened a series of ‘Voice of Global South’ summits.

-        China has championed BRICS expansion in 2024 by bringing in Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and others into it.

-        Russia leverages SCO and OPEC+ to project itself as a Eurasian voice of the developing world.

It is in this backdrop that the Tianjin SCO summit — slated to be their largest-ever gathering involving these nations of the Global South — may produce some interesting tangible or symbolic outcomes. If Putin, Modi, and Xi can demonstrate even modest coordination — on trade facilitation, energy flows, or South–South cooperation — its reverberations will be felt far and wide.

The world, fragmented by Trump’s tariffs, his weaponisation of trade and currency, with even his closest allies in Europe grappling with security, economic, and energy crises, has caused global govern