India, China and Russia on 17 July signalled a joint willingness to revive the long-dormant Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral dialogue. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko told reporters Moscow is holding “active negotiations” with New Delhi and Beijing on bringing the format back into operation. Beijing quickly endorsed the idea. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said cooperation among the three "benefits regional and global peace, security, stability and progress," adding that China is ready to keep communication channels open with its two partners to advance the mechanism. New Delhi struck a similarly positive note. Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Randhir Jaiswal described RIC as a consultative platform for discussing global and regional issues and said any meeting would be arranged "in a mutually convenient manner," without giving a timeline. The RIC format, conceived in the late 1990s by former Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, has convened more than 20 ministerial-level meetings but has been inactive since the pandemic and the 2020 India-China border standoff. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has repeatedly urged its resumption, arguing the grouping would strengthen Eurasian diplomacy amid rising geopolitical tensions.