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Putin Lands in New Delhi; Xi and Modi Meet for First Time in Seven Years

Vladimir Putin arrived in New Delhi on Friday for the BRICS summit, a visit that is itself a geopolitical statement. India has declined to join Western sanctions against Russia throughout the Ukraine war and has continued purchasing discounted Russian crude at substantial volumes — some estimates place Indian imports of Russian oil at roughly 1.8 million barrels per day as of mid-2026. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has maintained a studied neutrality that frustrates Washington while giving Delhi leverage over both belligerents, positioning India as a rare interlocutor with credible access to Moscow and Kyiv alike.

The more immediately consequential development may be a bilateral meeting arranged on the summit's sidelines between Xi Jinping and Modi — Xi's first visit to India in seven years. The previous visit predated the 2020 border clash in the Galwan Valley, where twenty Indian soldiers and an undisclosed number of Chinese troops died in high-altitude hand-to-hand combat. That incident produced a fundamental rupture: India banned hundreds of Chinese apps, tightened trade restrictions, and heavily militarized the border. Xi's presence in New Delhi now carries weight that exceeds a typical summit.

Both sides have signaled willingness to discuss disengagement at remaining friction points along the Line of Actual Control, and some partial pullbacks occurred last year. But the foundational disagreement over where the line actually runs in contested areas remains unresolved. Any agreement announced in New Delhi will be scrutinized for whether it reflects substantive movement or diplomatic ceremony.

BRICS itself presents a coordination challenge that may limit multilateral output. The bloc's 2024 expansion added Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Iran, and Ethiopia to a membership that already included Russia — at war in Europe — and China and India, with their contested border. Iran faces potential US military confrontation. Saudi Arabia and Iran were adversaries until a relatively recent Chinese-brokered rapprochement. Getting this coalition to agree on substantive joint positions is difficult; the summit's most consequential outputs are likely to emerge from bilateral corridor conversations rather than any joint communiqué.

A dollar-denominated undercurrent runs through the entire gathering. BRICS members have been discussing alternative payment mechanisms that reduce dependence on the US dollar for trade settlement. Progress has been slower than headlines suggest — the technical and political challenges of building a credible alternative reserve system are enormous — but the directional pressure away from dollar centrality represents a long-term structural challenge to US financial power.