India and China, on Thursday, announced that their armies have begun to disengage from Patrolling Point-15 in the Gogra-Hotsprings area of Eastern Ladakh, marking a step forward to end the standoff ongoing since May 2020.
The move comes ahead of next week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan, which both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping are attending.
Neither side has so far confirmed if the two leaders would hold bilateral talks on the sidelines of the summit, who haven’t spoken since a November 2019 meeting during the BRICS Summit in Brasilia and the beginning of the standoff in April 2020.