When facts on the ground alter suddenly, policy has to march in step with it. With Pakistan and China in the driver’s seat in Afghanistan, India’s fraying ties with old ally Russia is getting a much-needed fillip over shared concerns, as evidenced by the recent visit of Russia’s security council secretary Gen Nikolai Patrushev to New Delhi. Though Russia is in a loose alliance with China and Pakistan on Afghanistan, it, too, has concerns about the Islamic ideologues now part of the interim dispensation in Kabul. The situation in Afghanistan, with India left out in the cold, has triggered fears of it relapsing once again into being a hotbed of terrorism. India, which backed Hamid Karzai, then the Ashraf Ghani government till the end, has all but disappeared from a country where for two decades it put in millions of dollars worth of developmental assistance.