What the Modi–Xi meeting in Kazan signalled on 23 October 2024
A look back at the first India–China bilateral meeting in five years, held on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, and at the North Korea reports that preceded it.
Was a thaw between India and China under way? On 23 October 2024, Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi held a bilateral meeting with President of China Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia.
It was the first bilateral meeting between the two leaders in five years. It came in the aftermath of the 2020 border skirmishes between Indian and Chinese troops.
The summit took place in Russia while the war in Ukraine continued. Five days earlier, on 18 October 2024, South Korea's National Intelligence Service had said that North Korea had started sending troops to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol called a security meeting and said the international community must respond with all available means.
The two developments were separate, but both were part of the diplomatic picture surrounding the war on the date of the Kazan meeting.
