Despite warm greetings and ‘no limits’ partnerships, leaders of the three powerful countries must navigate constant friction in their triangular dynamic.
In the game of power diplomacy, body language is often more revealing than words. Two photos showing interactions between leaders from Beijing, New Delhi and Moscow have effectively summed up the state of their trilateral relations.
One was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bear hug with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday during his first visit to Moscow in nearly a decade. The other was taken in Beijing during Putin’s latest China visit in May, when he received a farewell hug from his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
While Modi is famous for his public displays of warmth and “hug diplomacy”, neither Xi nor Putin are known as big fans of physical contact other than shaking hands, which partly explains why they both appeared a bit uncomfortable in the pictures.
That is probably why the photos have hit the international headlines, prompting Washington and its allies to scrutinise the roles Beijing and New Delhi may have played in enabling Putin’s grinding aggression against Ukraine.
When the White House was asked to comment on the Xi-Putin embrace, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said wryly: “Well, that’s nice for them.”
Washington has good reasons to feel unease about the personal bonds between leaders of the two top US adversaries, with Beijing defying repeated threats of fresh Western sanctions over its perceived implicit support for Moscow over Ukraine.
In public, China has stopped talking about its “no limits” partnership with Russia in recent months, and Xi has refrained from referring to Putin as his “best, most intimate friend” following an international arrest warrant issued last year for the Russian leader.
