Breakthrough in India-China border row; will PM Modi meet Jinping in Russia?

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday landed in the Russian city of Kazan for the BRICS summit. While he will be meeting leaders of the other BRICS nations, the chances of the prime minister’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping have further increased on the sidelines of the two-day event, following a major breakthrough over border row on Monday. There is, however, no official statement about the meeting yet.

Over the years, China continued to claim some parts of India as its own resulting in clashes between the troops of both sides time and again. Tensions further increased since May 2020 following a fierce clash in Galwan, in which 20 Indian soldiers were martyred.

Modi-Jinping meetings after the Galvan incident

Both Modi and Jinping had held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, in June 2023, despite tensions. Both leaders again met in November 2022 on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. Since then, there have been no formal meetings between both leaders.

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However, after several meetings between the two, both sides on Monday entered into an agreement between both sides on patrolling engagements, providing signs of potential disengagements and ease of tensions.

After the agreement, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said that the agreement between the two sides is leading towards the direction of dis-engagement and eventually a resolution of the issues that arose in these areas in 2020.

Jaishankar welcomed China-India disengagement

Welcoming the development, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that while some areas in Ladakh had been inaccessible for patrolling since the 2020 incident, both countries now reached an agreement to resume patrolling in these regions. He added that following the agreement, the current understanding between the two nations restores the situation that was before 2020. Both sides resolved the blockages had prevented both sides from accessing certain areas paving the way for patrols to restart, he added further.