Vladimir Putin is heading to New Delhi this morning for a bilateral sit-down with Narendra
Modi that could reshape the defence balance across Asia — and the timing, less than 24
hours before the BRICS Summit officially opens, is no accident.
According to sources briefed on the agenda, the two leaders are expected to lock in the
delayed delivery of the remaining S-400 missile batteries, discuss transfer of Su-57 fighter
jet technology to Indian production lines, and green-light a joint BrahMos hypersonic
upgrade. Indian defence officials have described the meeting as “the most consequential
Modi-Putin exchange since Ukraine began.”
The Kremlin has spent months trying to reframe its isolation from the West as a pivot to the
Global South, and hosting the world’s third-largest economy as a defence patron is exactly
the picture Moscow wants beamed out this week. Beijing, meanwhile, is watching closely: Xi
Jinping is also expected in Delhi in the next 48 hours, and Chinese state media has already
floated the phrase “trilateral moment.”
For India, the calculation is more delicate. New Delhi has spent the last year trying to prove
it can talk to Washington and Moscow in the same week without either capital walking
away from the table. Prime Minister Modi’s team has quietly briefed Western diplomats that
the S-400 conversation is about “contract completion, not escalation.” But the optics of
hosting Putin days before addressing global CEOs at the BRICS Business Forum are
impossible to ignore.
That business forum, scheduled for Friday, has drawn confirmations from Huawei, Alibaba,
Emirates Airline, First Abu Dhabi Bank, Etihad Airways and Embraer. Modi is expected to
use the address to pitch India as the manufacturing spine of a re-wired global supply chain
— a message that lands very differently when the man beside him on stage is under
Western sanctions.
The BRICS bloc itself has expanded aggressively over the past two years and now
represents 49 percent of the world’s population and roughly 40 percent of global GDP.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is also on the confirmed guest list, an appearance that
will sharpen Washington’s attention given the ongoing US-Iran conflict now in its seventh
month.
