What Putin Hopes to Gain From BRICS in India – and Why He May Not Get It

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in New Delhi on Friday ahead of a two-day BRICS summit expected to be dominated by Russia’s war against Ukraine, the expanding conflict in the Middle East, and mounting economic challenges. Putin landed at Palam Air Force Station, where he was greeted by Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh, AFP reported.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The gathering brings together the leaders of an expanded BRICS at a moment when geopolitical conflicts are testing the group’s ability to maintain a common position. Originally founded in 2009 as a platform for major emerging economies seeking greater influence in institutions traditionally dominated by Western powers, the bloc has expanded to 11 members, including Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Beneath the choreography of the New Delhi summit, however, lies a coalition divided by competing national interests, territorial disputes and, increasingly, differing approaches toward Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Why BRICS became more important to the Kremlin For Moscow, the summit provides Putin another opportunity to demonstrate that Russia retains influential partners outside the West despite its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since February 2022, BRICS has taken on greater economic and political importance for the Kremlin. Western governments have imposed sweeping sanctions on Russian banks, companies and individuals, while major Russian financial institutions have been cut off from the SWIFT messaging system. Other Topics of Interest Zelensky Signs Historic 100-Year Partnership Agreement With Carney, Advances Drone Deal, FREYJA Support Canada pledged to contribute technology to Ukraine’s FREYJA anti-ballistic program. Zelensky said the two countries are also advancing a Drone Deal. Russia responded by redirecting trade toward countries that did not join Western sanctions, particularly China and India, and by pushing greater use of national currencies and alternative payment mechanisms. BRICS offers Moscow a ready-made platform for that effort. Russia redirected huge volumes of oil toward Asian markets after Europe sharply curtailed purchases. India became one of the largest destinations for Russian crude, often taking advantage of substantial discounts as Moscow searched for buyers. That trade helped Russia preserve an important source of export revenue even as Western governments sought to squeeze the Kremlin’s ability to finance its war. But Moscow’s ability to turn BRICS into a broader challenge to the Western-led financial system remains limited. India, which chairs BRICS this year, is pushing to improve links between members’ central bank digital currencies to make cross-border transactions faster and cheaper. New Delhi, however, has explicitly distanced that initiative from an attempt to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. While Moscow may see it as protection from Western financial pressure, India presents it primarily as a mechanism for facilitating trade. Unease within the ranks Russia and China have promoted BRICS as part of a broader shift toward a multipolar international order, but India has resisted treating membership in the group as a choice between the West and the rest. New Delhi continues to deepen economic, technological and security relations with the US, Europe and other Western partners while simultaneously maintaining its longstanding relationship with Moscow. That makes India important to Putin – but not a reliable partner in forging a united anti-Western front. Expansion has made that problem even more pronounced. The Middle East conflict is expected to dominate much of this year’s summit, particularly because BRICS members hold sharply different positions on the fighting involving Iran, the US and Israel. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s visit marks his first to India and comes as Tehran seeks diplomatic backing from partners outside the West. BRICS expansion has also brought rivals into the same grouping. The sharpest divide at this summit is between Iran and the UAE, which suspended trade and financial transactions with Tehran after being hit by Iranian missiles during the Iran-US war. Those tensions have already complicated efforts to reach consensus, with BRICS foreign ministers failing to agree on a joint statement in May. Competing ambitions of the Bloc’s giants The other major fault line runs between the bloc’s two Asian giants. Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected in New Delhi for his first visit to India since 2019, marking another step in the cautious thaw between the two countries following years of tension after their deadly 2020 border clash. Yet the improvement should not be mistaken for strategic alignment. Deep mistrust persists over their disputed Himalayan frontier, trade imbalances, Chinese investment and the two countries’ competing regional ambitions. One of the clearest examples is Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. India has consistently refused to endorse the project, objecting in particular to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which passes through Pakistan-administered Kashmir, territory claimed by India. New Delhi considers the project an infringement on its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The dispute illustrates a broader problem for BRICS: its members may agree that the international system should give emerging powers greater influence, but they frequently disagree over what that new order should actually look like. Kyiv offers India another strategic track India’s relationship with Ukraine further complicates Moscow’s narrative. New Delhi has not abandoned its decades-long partnership with Russia, but it has gradually broadened its engagement with Kyiv beyond diplomatic calls for peace. During Modi’s visit to Ukraine in August 2024, the two countries signed four agreements covering agriculture and the food industry, medical-product regulation, cultural cooperation and humanitarian grant assistance. The humanitarian framework established a mechanism for India to finance community-development projects in Ukraine. Projects can include infrastructure in areas such as health, education, agriculture, renewable energy, transport and communications, providing Indian companies with opportunities to participate in Ukraine’s recovery. That should not yet be confused with a large-scale reconstruction boom for Indian companies. But it gives New Delhi a concrete economic foothold in Ukraine at a time when governments and businesses are positioning themselves for the country’s eventual rebuilding. Defense provides another potential area of cooperation. Ukraine has long supplied technology and equipment important to India’s military, particularly marine gas turbines used aboard Indian naval vessels. Ukrainian manufacturer Zorya-Mashproekt has supplied propulsion systems to India for decades, creating a practical defense relationship that predates the current war. Indian officials have also identified defense as one of the areas for possible expansion in bilateral relations with Kyiv. Ukraine’s rapid development of battlefield technologies since Russia’s invasion – particularly drones, electronic warfare and other unmanned systems – adds another potential dimension to that relationship, although no major India-Ukraine drone technology-transfer agreement has yet been announced. The result is a relationship driven by more than symbolism. India has strategic reasons to preserve ties with Ukraine even while Moscow remains one of New Delhi’s most important defense and energy partners. Public pushback: How Modi ruined Putin’s scripted unity Russia nevertheless remains deeply important to India. Moscow has been a major supplier of military hardware for decades, while discounted Russian oil transformed the economic relationship after the invasion of Ukraine. Yet New Delhi is increasingly demonstrating that maintaining those ties does not mean automatically supporting Moscow’s political narrative. Putin last visited India in December 2025 and met Modi again during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. During that meeting, Modi publicly urged Putin to move away from what he called an “endless war,” stressing that disputes should be resolved through peaceful dialogue and emphasizing the human cost of continued fighting. “We need to move from endless war to an end to the war, to a cessation of hostilities,” Modi told the Russian leader. The unusually direct appeal put Russia’s war against Ukraine at the center of an otherwise friendly meeting between the strategic partners. For Putin, it also exposed the limits of Moscow’s ability to present close relations with India as evidence that major powers outside the West accept Russia’s continued war. India has meanwhile continued high-level contacts with Kyiv. External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Ukraine earlier this month, where President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed New Delhi’s diplomatic efforts to help end the war. “I am grateful to India for its commitment to ending this unjust war,” Zelensky said. That is the contradiction Putin brings with him to New Delhi.