Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday claimed that while India had joined the QUAD alliance, which includes the United States, Japan, and Australia, solely for trade purposes the countries within the group were already attempting to organize naval and other military exercises.“We spoke to our Indian friends back then and they told us that their interest in joining the QUAD is exclusively of trade of economic nature and cooperation in other peaceful areas,” he said. He pointed out that “in practice, other countries from the Quad are already trying, already insisting on organizing naval exercises and other military exercises not, not under the Quad edges.” Lavrov warned that these activities are part of a larger agenda to militarise the grouping, adding, “they try to involve all the four countries into these exercises. And I’m sure that our Indian friends, they can see this provocation clearly.”

‘Understanding between India, China to calm border situation’

The Russian foreign minister also said that the time is right to resume Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral mechanism, citing a reported thaw in border tensions between New Delhi and Beijing.“Now that, as I understand, an understanding has been reached between India and China on how to calm the situation on the border, it seems to me that the time has come to revive this RIC troika,” Lavrov said while addressing an international conference in Perm, Russia.Also read: West trying to pit India against China, says Russian foreign minister LavrovLavrov described the format originally established at the initiative of former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov as a valuable forum that had previously convened over 20 times at the level of foreign ministers and across economic, trade, and financial domains. “I would like to reaffirm our interest in seeing the resumption of the three trilateral format. Russia, India, China, that was established many years ago at the initiative of Maxim Primakov. And since then it has held ministerial meetings for more than 20 times, not only at the level of the heads of the foreign ministries, but between the other economic, trade and financial organizations of these three countries. And when India and China are finally coming to an agreement on how the situation at the border can be resolved, I think it’s high time we resume the talks in this format,” Lavrov said.Earlier, Lavrov had directly blamed the West for trying to “drive a wedge” between India and China, criticising the strategic rebranding of the Asia-Pacific as the “Indo-Pacific” and warning that such moves were designed to isolate China and sideline Asean.“This is a policy that Russian President Vladimir Putin recently highlighted again ‘divide and conquer,’” Lavrov had said.