Great-Power Triangularity: China–India Dynamics and Russia’s South Asia Strategy ‎During the Ukraine War

Abstract

The article analyses on how changing ties between China and India have affected Russia’s South Asian strategy ‎since the conflict in Ukraine. The paper also discusses how China’s rise and changing India–China relations shape Russia’s new policy toward South Asia. Great-Power Triangularity is the new foreign policy line of ‎the China-India-Russia triad in South Asia as influenced by the Ukraine War. The current situation in Ukraine has ‎led to a shift in the geopolitical tensions and calculations in South Asia today. growing China–India tensions have made Russia’s regional balancing strategy more complex. India continues to maintain strategic autonomy by cooperating with Russia while developing closer relations with Western powers. Russia also seeks greater access to the Indian Ocean through energy routes, naval cooperation, diplomacy, and regional partnerships, although its influence remains weaker than that of China, India, and the United States. This ‎paper employs qualitative approach through secondary literature review. It is focused on analysis of Russian ‎power-planning and evidence of its balancing relations with China and India in order to secure its footprint in ‎South Asia. The findings demonstrate that amid ongoing regional tensions Russia continues its arms trade with ‎India, deals with complex relations with Pakistan, reestablishes its policy towards China. It examines how changing power dynamics affect regional security, stability, alliances, and military, economic, and diplomatic cooperation in the post-war order. Russia’s particular ‎consideration of the region must be placed in the context of step-by-step geopolitical change on the relative map ‎of South Asia. The dramatic developments in China-India relations may be presented as focal influencing factor ‎in the process.‎