India needs to manoeuvre with caution amid RIC revival & Trump’s tariffs

Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping
Given the current geopolitical situation, with the international community bifurcated into two identifiable camps, the move by Russia to try to revive the currently dormant Russia-India-China (RIC) mechanism, and its prompt backing by China, seems to be motivated.
It may be noted that, following comments by Russian leaders about the prospect of reviving the RIC, China’s foreign ministry affirmed that Beijing was ready to communicate with Moscow and New Delhi on advancing trilateral cooperation.
This comes at a time when US President Donald Trump is putting pressure on India to play along with his tariff moves, even as he warns BRICS nations against attempts at de-dollarisation of the global economy.
Other entities like the EU are also expressing dissatisfaction with India for buying Russian crude and, thereby, helping Russia finance the Ukraine conflict.
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, India has been engaged in clever diplomacy, refusing to condemn the former while advocating a negotiated end to that war. In exchange for taking such a “neutral” stand, India has gained by getting Russian crude as also arms and weapons on mutually beneficial terms.
Apparently, both Russia and China, two nations which have come together in recent years as the primary threads in the anti-West strand, consider this an opportune moment to pull India towards them, something that will serve to make up for their relative isolation within the global community.
Clearly, with India choosing to remain noncommittal on the RIC mechanism’s revival, it has so far refused to discard its ‘running with the hare while hunting with the hound’ strategy. This is certainly the safest option, considering the unpredictable nature of Donald Trump.
No matter that Beijing has of late been making peace overtures to India, asking the latter to bury the border hatchet for the time being and focus on bilateral trade, which, at present, is clouded by the shadows of Trump’s tariff threats.
Yet, closer cooperation between China and India on the global front remains a pipe dream, because the former is a threat to the Indo-Pacific region, and the latter, for national security reasons, requires the ties it has forged with the US, Australia, Japan, etc.
However, India has deemed it more prudent not to outright dismiss Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko’s claim that Moscow expects the resumption of the RIC format and is discussing this issue with Beijing and New Delhi.
People familiar with the matter have been quoted by the press as vouching that no meeting of the RIC mechanism has been agreed to at this point in time, and there are no discussions underway on the scheduling of such a meeting. There can be little doubt that in the near future both Russia and China will pursue the RIC issue further, thereby putting severe stress on the Indian diplomatic strategy.