Putin arrives in New Delhi for BRICS summit

Vladimir Putin arrived in New Delhi on Friday ahead of a two-day BRICS leaders’ summit, according to Euronews, with Indian officials staging a formal welcome as photographers recorded the visit. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he expected “positive and meaningful discussions” and is scheduled to hold talks with Putin the same day. China’s Xi Jinping is also set to attend, on what Euronews calls his first visit to India since 2019.

The gathering comes as BRICS tries to look like a stable alternative forum while its members carry conflicts and sanctions into the room. Euronews reports the summit agenda is expected to revolve around the war in Ukraine, the Middle East fighting, and knock-on issues in oil and global trade. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian is due to arrive in India amid the ongoing war involving Tehran, putting a belligerent party at the same table as Gulf monarchies that now sit inside the expanded bloc.

That expansion is also the group’s stress test. BRICS now includes not only Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but also Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Euronews notes, plus a larger ring of partner states. A forum built to signal “the global south” now has rivals and competitors whose interests collide on energy pricing, shipping security, and relations with Washington and Europe.

Indian analyst Harsh V. Pant at the Observer Research Foundation told Euronews the Gulf conflict is likely to become the summit’s “central fault line,” and argued the recent enlargement—once sold as a diplomatic win—has become a constraint. The contradiction is visible in the membership list: states that benefit from higher oil prices sit alongside major importers that pay them; governments under heavy sanctions sit alongside those trying to keep access to Western finance; and countries that sell themselves as neutral conveners are hosting leaders whose wars are shaping global inflation.

For Russia, the optics of a red-carpet arrival in India offer a picture that sanctions cannot easily erase, even if the summit cannot deliver much beyond communiqués. For India, hosting provides leverage with multiple capitals at once, but also imports other people’s disputes into its own diplomatic choreography.

The first BRICS summit was held in 2009 in Yekaterinburg. On Friday, in New Delhi, the cameras were already in place before the talks began.