Putin-Xi Beijing Summit & Power of Siberia: India’s Strategic Options Tighten

CURRENT AFFAIRS | 22 MAY 2026

Russian President Vladimir Putin concluded a three-day visit to Beijing on 20 May 2026, signing more than 40 cooperation agreements with Chinese President Xi Jinping across energy, technology, investment, transport, space, and digital. The headline document was a joint declaration on “the formation of a multipolar world and international relations of a new type,” running close to 10,000 words. The summit landed exactly one week after US President Donald Trump’s own three-day China visit — making Beijing the diplomatic centre of gravity for two of the world’s most consequential bilateral relationships in a single month.

For India, the geopolitics are sharp. Russia is India’s largest defence supplier and a long-standing strategic partner. China is India’s largest land border challenge and second-largest trading partner. The US is India’s largest single export destination. When Russia and China move closer, and when the US-China track also shifts, Delhi’s room to manoeuvre — and to balance — narrows.

The Power of Siberia question

The summit’s central energy story was not what was signed, but what was not. Russia has been pushing the proposed Power of Siberia 2 pipeline — a 2,600-km route through Mongolia carrying gas from the Yamal fields of western Siberia to China — as the geo-economic centrepiece of post-Ukraine pivot to Asia. The pipeline would partially replace volumes lost when Russia’s gas exports to Europe collapsed after 2022.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the two sides had agreed on “basic parameters of understanding” — the route and construction process — but no start date and no agreed gas price. Power of Siberia 1, by contrast, has been operational since 2019, carrying gas from East Siberian fields to Heilongjiang province in northeastern China over a 3,000-km route. Russia wants PoS-2 to lock in similar long-term volumes. China is in no rush.

Trade reshape: how deeply Russia has tilted East

Before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the European Union accounted for about 32% of Russia’s total trade — close to $228 billion. By 2025, that share with the EU had fallen to single digits. In its place, China now absorbs roughly 32% of Russia’s total trade — close to $700 billion. Two-thirds of that bilateral commerce is settled in yuan or roubles, not dollars. Russia has become, in the words of Sergei Lavrov, China’s “junior partner with senior history.”

The “no-limits partnership” was declared by Putin and Xi on 4 February 2022 — days before Russian tanks crossed into Ukraine. Four years later, the partnership is now operationally manifest: in BRICS expansion, in SCO consolidation, in yuan-rouble settlement, and in coordinated diplomatic positions on Iran, North Korea, and US sanctions architecture.

India’s strategic options

Delhi’s position is delicate. India and China reached a Line of Actual Control (LAC) framework agreement on patrolling in October 2024 — easing the four-year-long military standoff that began with the Galwan clashes in June 2020. Border management talks have resumed. Special Representatives have met. But mutual strategic suspicion runs deep.

India’s three options, as discussed in IR commentary this week, are: (a) deepen the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral — last convened in 2020, sidelined since — to retain Moscow as a counterweight to a runaway China; (b) accelerate Quad engagement with the US, Japan and Australia, accepting that Trump-era unpredictability is a feature not a bug; or (c) continue the “multi-alignment” of recent years — purchasing discounted Russian oil, doing G20 leadership with the West, while keeping LAC-managed bilateral channels with China open.

Test yourself

Why this matters for CLAT 2027

CLAT typically devotes 4-6 GK passages to international affairs each year. The Putin-Xi Beijing summit is the kind of story that anchors a 5-question comprehension passage covering: institutions (UNSC, BRICS, SCO), bilateral mechanisms (Russia-China “no-limits”, India-China LAC framework, India-Russia annual summit), and economic indicators (trade share, energy pipelines, currency settlement).

Three exam-ready takeaways. First, India is the only major power that is simultaneously a member of BRICS, SCO, Quad and G20 — a unique multi-aligned footprint. This is sometimes called “strategic autonomy” or “multi-alignment.” It is tested in MCQs that ask which-of-the-following-is-India-a-member-of, where the trick is including a grouping like AUKUS (which India is not in) or NATO+ (which India has not joined).

Second, the India-China LAC framework agreement of October 2024 restored patrolling rights at Depsang and Demchok in eastern Ladakh — the two friction points that had remained unresolved after the 2020-23 phased disengagement. The agreement was finalised on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping held their first bilateral meeting in five years there.

Third, the legal framework of treaty obligations. India is not a party to the Energy Charter Treaty but has bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with both Russia and China — though the China BIT was terminated in 2018 and a new one is under negotiation. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), to which India is a signatory but has not ratified, governs treaty interpretation and is occasionally tested in legal reasoning.

The Putin-Xi summit will not transform Indian foreign policy overnight. But it tightens the constraints under which Delhi operates. The question for the next 18 months is whether India can leverage being simultaneously in BRICS (with Russia and China), in Quad (with the US, Japan, Australia), and in SCO (with Russia, China, and Pakistan) — or whether the contradictions of being everywhere will force a choice. CLAT comprehension passages love precisely this kind of strategic tension. Read them carefully.