Moscow, Jan 20: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday lauded Moscow’s bilateral ties with Delhi and Beijing and called for reactivating the Russia-India-China (RIC) trialogue, asserting that multipolarity is “here to stay”.
In his annual press conference, Lavrov reviewed the accomplishments of Russian diplomacy in 2025.
“I would also like to note the particularly privileged strategic nature of our partnership with India, which President (Vladimir) Putin also visited in December of last year,” he said.
Putin was in India for a two-day state visit last month for the 23rd India-Russia annual summit, during which the two countries unveiled a raft of measures, including a five-year roadmap to build a robust economic partnership.
Lavrov also spoke about Russia’s relations with China.
“They are unprecedented in their level, their depth, and the coincidence of positions regarding the development of the situation in Eurasia and on the global stage as a whole,” he said.
The foreign minister also called for the reactivation of the RIC, which has been frozen since the deadly Galwan Valley standoff between the militaries of India and China in 2020.
“We need to activate the RIC trilateral format, which in a way is the foundation of BRICS, a key element of a multipolar world,” Lavrov said.
The BRICS bloc initially included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and has expanded to embrace Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Describing the current geopolitical chaos and collapse of “rule-based order”, a fallout of Soviet disintegration and decline of the unipolar world, the foreign minister said multipolarity is here to stay on the international stage.
“Multipolarity as an objective trend is here to stay. It can’t simply be placed under some unipolar or bipolar umbrella. There are already too many centres of economic growth,” he said.
“Therefore, at some point, we’ll still have to agree on how these new major players, whether national or regional, will interact within integration structures,” he added.
Lavrov named China, India, and Brazil as new centres of growth and added that Africa is on the way to becoming a new centre.
