NEW DELHI: The government is in touch with Russia over the Sino-Indian military standoff at Doklam ahead of the upcoming Brics summit in China, official sources said. This is significant as India, hampered by an increasingly disoriented Trump administration, has looked at Moscow in the past 6 months to convince Beijing to shed its antagonistic approach towards India.

This was obvious also in the way India reached out earlier this year to Russia to convince China to drop its opposition to India's bid for membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). "Russia is an important strategic partner and it's natural to discuss issues concerning security with a friendly country," said an official requesting anonymity.

In recent Brics preparatory meetings, Indian officials discussed with their Russian counterparts the situation at Doklam in Bhutan, reiterating India's position that by constructing a road China was unilaterally changing the status quo and that this had serious security implications for India.

While India has not yet officially announced the participation of PM Narendra Modi in the Brics summit, which will be held September 3-5 in Xiamen in China, Russia is confident that the event will turn out to be successful despite the tension prevailing at Doklam.

In that context, it may be significant to mention here that China has continued to stall the meeting of Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral foreign ministers' meeting which was scheduled earlier this year in April. Even though Beijing denied it, the decision to pull out of the meeting in April was widely seen as China's way of getting back at India for hosting Dalai Lama in Arunachal Pradesh.

Despite Russia having worked actively to keep the RIC mechanism alive, the annual meeting couldn't take place this year because of "differences over dates". While India doesn't expect Moscow to come out in open with support for its position on Doklam, it won't mind the Russians working through diplomatic channels to convince Beijing to stop constructing road on disputed territory.

It also won't be enough for Modi to just show up at Brics without keeping the outcome document in mind. New Delhi is looking for support from Russia to ensure that Indian interests, especially on the issue of terrorism, are not diluted.

India will remember the Goa Declaration issued after the 2016 Brics summit which failed to address India's core concerns related to state-sponsored or cross-border terrorism. It is believed that China blocked the use of that term used by India to highlight Islamabad's support to India-specific terror groups. It also blocked India from name-checking Pakistan based terror groups like Lashkar and Jaish even as it let Russia mention Jabhat al-Nusra, a terror group in Syria.

The fact that the Brics summit took place last year not long after the Uri attack, which saw 19 Indian soldiers killed in a cross-border terror strike, only added insult to injury. It is unlikely, officials said, that India will agree to such a formulation of the outcome document this year.

As strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellaney had put it, China had then managed to successfully defend Pakistan terrorism at a multilateral event on Indian soil. As Indian officials admitted then, there was no consensus on naming Pakistan based groups as other Brics nations were not hurt by their actions.

