Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said Moscow would not interfere in the “delicate” relationship between India and China, expressing confidence that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping were working to resolve outstanding issues of mutual interest, including the long-running border dispute.Speaking during an interaction with media in St Petersburg, Putin said Russia maintained strong ties with both New Delhi and Beijing and saw no reason to intervene in their bilateral matters.“These are delicate, multi-faceted relations between India and China, and interfering into them is not a good idea. Of course, we interact with our friends in both India and China,” Putin said in response to a question by PTI.“President Xi and PM Modi are both trying to resolve all the issues of mutual interest, including the relations on the border,” he added.Putin’s remarks come as India and China have undertaken a series of measures over the past year to rebuild ties after relations came under severe strain following the 2020 Galwan Valley clashes and the military standoff that continued for more than four years.Highlighting Russia’s ties with both countries, Putin said Moscow’s relationship with India did not affect its ties with China, just as its growing partnership with Beijing did not undermine relations with New Delhi.“As for Russia, we have our own relations with China, with India… relations between Russia and India do not disturb China, our relations with China do not disturb India,” he said.The Russian president also referred to the origins of the Russia-India-China framework, saying, “At one point, I suggested that leaders of India, China meet here, that’s how Russia-India-China was established.”On relations involving Pakistan, Putin rejected the suggestion that Islamabad was under Beijing’s control.“I don’t think so,” he said. “First and foremost, Pakistan is a large country, it has multi-faceted ties with different countries.”“Of course, for Pakistan, it is very important to take into account the cooperation with the Republic of China, but everyone is developing the relations with China”, Putin added.On defence cooperation, Putin highlighted the BrahMos missile programme and said Russia had proposed collaboration with India on fifth-generation fighter technology.“We proposed our Indian friends to work together on technology, the fifth generation technology. But Indian friends said do it on your own and we will join. We are ready to work with India in this field to supply aircraft, we don’t have any issue with, any limitation,” he said.Putin also said Russia was prepared to expand cooperation in air-defence systems and share technological expertise with India. “Now we are working on updating the system, it is unique expertise, we are ready to share this technology with Chinese, Indian friends, we keep working in this regard,” the Russian President said.
