Russia-India Ties

• Russia has lifted the ban on import of non-basmati rice and oilseeds from India

Russia-Iran Ties

• Russia has taken a “principled” decision to sell Iran an improved version of the S-300 air defence missiles and to build a second nuclear reactor at Bushehr,
• President Vladimir Putin instructed the government to prepare the two proposals for his meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, in Sep 2013 on the sidelines of a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Russia-China Ties

• Since March 2013, Xi Jinping has traveled overseas three times. His first visit after taking office was to Russia. On the same trip, he took in three African countries and attended the BRICS Summit in South Africa.
• In June 2013 , Xi visited three Latin American countries and held a summit with U.S. President Barack Obama in California. For this forthcoming G20 and SCO trip, Xi will again meet with Putin in St. Petersburg and Bishkek.
• The third trip (for G20 and SCO summit in Russia) will also be Xi’s second visit to Russia in six months, itself rare enough in the neighborhood diplomacy of top Chinese leaders in recent years and not especially common for leaders of other countries either.
• Russia is a diplomatic priority for Beijing. Some Chinese scholars see close links between China and Russia as a counterweight to the U.S.-Japan alliance, offsetting the pressure of the United States and Japan on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands issue. For Russia, ties with China can also balance U.S. policy.
• It is worth noting that coinciding with Xi’s first visit to Russia, Beijing and Moscow signed the largest weapons procurement contract in the past decade, in which China is to buy 24 Su-35 fighters and four Lada-class submarines (although some reports have denied this deal actually going through). Since then, China and Russia have held a “routine” military exercise, again showing the growing sophistication of military cooperation between the two countries.