Prime Minister Narendra Modi opens the 18th BRICS summit at Bharat Mandapam on Saturday, seating Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at a single table while two wars grind on outside the hall. Putin landed at Palam Air Force Station early Friday, and Pezeshkian followed within hours. Xi arrives Saturday, ending a seven-year absence from India. India chairs the 11-member bloc — and must now steer every one of them toward a New Delhi Declaration they can all sign.
Why the World Is Watching BRICS One
India holds the chair for the fourth time, after 2012, 2016 and 2021 — but over a group that bears little resemblance to the one it last led. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Indonesia have joined the founding five, though Riyadh has never publicly confirmed its accession. The newer members now argue among themselves nearly as often as they argue with the West.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar set the economic tone at Friday’s BRICS Business Forum, telling delegates the bloc’s aim is to absorb shocks while staying connected and competitive. Harsh V. Pant of the Observer Research Foundation was blunter about the politics, calling the Gulf war the summit’s central fault line.
Two Wars, One Table, a Narrow BRICS Door
Making his first trip to India as president, Pezeshkian arrives with a demand: he wants BRICS to condemn the American and Israeli campaign that began February 28. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are resisting that language — the same split that sank a joint statement when BRICS foreign ministers met in Delhi in May, which Shilan Shah of Capital Economics points to as a sign the war will test the enlarged bloc’s cohesion.
On Ukraine, Modi has already made his pitch, urging Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek on August 31 to move from “endless war towards the end of war.” Jaishankar traveled to Kyiv this month. American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Putin in Moscow on September 5 and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the next day — but produced no framework.
BRICS runs no mediation machinery, appoints no envoys, enforces nothing. What Delhi offers this weekend is smaller: proximity. Putin and Pezeshkian will spend two days in the same building as leaders who still talk to Washington. Proximity has ended wars before. It has also produced a great many communiqués.
Energy, Sanctions and the Bill the Global South Pays
The economics sharpen everything. The World Bank recorded the Hormuz disruption as the largest oil-supply shock on record, with Brent climbing roughly 65 percent in March alone. Brent broke back above $100 this week, and HSBC raised its 2026 forecast to $90 a barrel, warning markets may not rebalance until mid-2027.
Members want practical tools: local-currency settlement, cross-border payment links, cheaper development finance. Iran’s central bank governor Abdolnasser Hemmati is seeking entry to the New Development Bank, and Putin met NDB president Dilma Rousseff on Friday.
India, though, won’t carry an anti-dollar banner. President Trump has threatened tariffs up to 100 percent over de-dollarization, insisting “the Dollar is king,” and Washington cut its tariff on Indian goods to 18 percent in February in exchange for curbs on Russian oil. Retired diplomat Srikumar Menon expects that pressure to push India toward cautious language rather than a changed agenda.
Modi, Putin and Xi: What the Bilaterals Could Yield
Modi met Putin at 3:30 p.m. Friday and Pezeshkian at 6:15 p.m.; he meets Xi at 5:45 p.m. Saturday. Putin also addressed the business forum plenary and toured the INNOPROM exhibition — his first BRICS appearance outside Russia since February 2022.
The Modi-Xi meeting carries the heavier load. Xi last visited India in October 2019, months before the Galwan Valley clash froze the relationship. Flights, visas and high-level contacts have resumed since the 2024 patrolling agreement, but the boundary dispute, a widening trade deficit and Indian curbs on Chinese investment remain unresolved.
Is RIC Finally Taking Shape?
Not formally, and not this weekend. Russia has pushed hardest: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued the time has come to revive the Russia-India-China troika, dormant since a virtual ministerial in November 2021. The three leaders last met in that format at the G20 in Osaka in 2019.
India has responded carefully — the Ministry of External Affairs says revival will happen in a “mutually convenient manner,” and prefers a foreign ministers’ meeting first. No trilateral sits on the Delhi schedule. Still, a Modi-Putin-Xi photograph would travel fast — and land hardest in Washington.
