Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in the Indian capital on Friday ahead of an 11-member BRICS summit set to be dominated by wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, as well as economic challenges. Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian are due to hold talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while Chinese President Xi Jinping is also expected to meet Modi on the sidelines of the two-day meeting. Putin arrived at Palam Air Force Station in New Delhi, where he was greeted by India’s Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh, according to footage broadcast by Russia’s Ria Novosti news agency. Posters of a beaming Modi lined streets across New Delhi to welcome leaders, with heavy deployments of security forces across the capital and widespread traffic restrictions in central districts.
Delhi police have urged people to be patient and cooperative. BRICS, which stands for the original members of the grouping – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – was created in 2009 as a forum for major emerging economies seeking greater influence in institutions dominated by Western powers. It has since expanded, and now includes Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – three countries with sharply differing positions on the US-Israel war on Iran launched in February. “The Gulf conflict is going to be the central fault line this time during the BRICS summit,” Harsh V Pant of India’s Observer Research Foundation told the AFP news agency. “What was seen until last year as an achievement – the expansion of BRICS – today looks like a big constraint on BRICS,” Pant said. It will be Pezeshkian’s first visit to India as Iranian president, and will put the Middle East conflict firmly on the agenda.
The Iranian president’s visit marks the first in eight years for the role. “The war in Iran will provide a stern test of the (expanded) group’s cohesion,” Shilan Shah of Capital Economics told AFP, noting the failure of the BRICS foreign ministers to agree on a joint statement when they met in New Delhi in May. India maintains cordial relations with Iran and Israel, but is also careful to strike a delicate balance in its ties with Washington. India has navigated the energy crisis caused by the war on Iran in part by turning to Russia, one of its most important strategic partners and its most controversial fuel supplier in recent years, as Moscow’s war against Ukraine drags on. Putin last visited India in December 2025, but he also met Modi in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, this month.
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Kyiv this month, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was “grateful to India for its commitment to ending this unjust war”. For China’s Xi, it will be his first visit to India since 2019, and marks the biggest step yet in a cautious thaw between the rival neighbours, six years after a deadly military clash along their disputed Himalayan border. Ties between the nuclear-armed Asian giants have been warming again recently, with flights, visas and high-level contacts gradually being restored. However, deep mistrust remains, with their contested frontier, a widening trade deficit and strategic rivalry still complicating ties.
