Ladakh

Ladakh is a sparsely populated Union Territory of India. It is bordered by Tibet to the east, the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh to the south, the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir to the west, and the southwest corner of East Turkistan in the far north. Its capital is Leh.

In June 2020 troops from the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) and India clashed in the Galwan Valley.^[1] The battle was fought with rocks, batons, and barbed wire-wrapped clubs. A 1996 agreement banned the use of guns and explosives along the disputed line of control. India reported 20 of their soldiers were killed, whereas the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) did not report any of its deaths. Indian media and the Russian news agency TASS reported that as many as 45 PLA soldiers may have been killed.^[2] Over the following 12 months the PLA increased its troop strength along the border from 15,000 to 50,000 by July 2021, and moved advanced surface-to-air missiles including its HQ-9 system, which is similar to Russia’s S-300 and America’s Patriot missile.^[3]

In late 2021 the PRC deployed machine gun robots along the line of actual control.^[4]

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