India and China have reached an agreement on military disengagement along their disputed border, New Delhi said, a step toward reducing frictions between the nuclear-armed neighbors that comes as both countries’ leaders arrive in Russia for a summit.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met Wednesday on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia, in their first bilateral meeting in five years. The meeting came days after the two giant neighbors announced a border accord aimed at ending a four-year-old standoff involving tens of thousands of their soldiers in the mountainous Ladakh region,

Four years ago, several soldiers from both sides were killed in a bloody melee. Any thaw between the countries could have global implications.