New Delhi: India on Thursday gave a non-committal response to the announcement by Russia that a trilateral summit with Indian and Chinese leaders was in the offing “in the near future”.On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a virtual conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping, during which they discussed their growing close ties and opposition to western policies in Indo-Pacific to geo-economic issues.At a media briefing, Kremlin presidential aide Yury Ushakov said that since the cooperation about the ‘Russia-India-China’ format came up, the two leaders “agreed to continue exchanging opinions in this regard and to endeavour to hold the next summit within the RIC framework in the near future”.The possibility of a RIC summit has significance since there has been no meeting between the top leadership of India and China at the highest level since the second informal summit in October 2019. There has been no summit-level meeting between the Indian and Chinese leaders, either in-person or virtual, with the armies of both sides continuing to be in a stand-off since May 2020. They have, however, participated in multilateral summits like the G-20 and SCO meetings.While the top leaders haven’t met or even talked to each other on the phone, there have been meetings between the foreign and defence ministers, focussing on resolving the stand-off.A day after the Russian announcement, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) gave a measured reaction, which didn’t confirm or deny the prospect of a RIC summit.In answer to a question, MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi first recalled that there had been a virtual meeting of the RIC foreign ministers on November 26. “Beyond that, I have not got any specific development to share with you,” he added.To another query if Russia wants to be a “peacemaker” between India and China, he answered, “We have very good relations with Russia, and categorising them as that is not something I am comfortable with.”The Russian president had visited India on December 6 to take part in the first annual bilateral summit in two years.According to Putin’s aide, the Russian president “informed Xi Jinping about the visit to New Delhi on December 6 in this context”, referring to the RIC cooperation and possibility of a summit soon.The three leaders had previously met in a trilateral format on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka.