Indian PM Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin held bilateral talks on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit that will begin on Saturday.
The two leaders "exchanged views on India-Russia engagement in the multilateral sphere, in particular in BRICS under India’s Chairship for 2026," a statement by India's Ministry of External Affairs said.
In the meeting, the leaders also exchanged views on "key regional and global issues of mutual interest, including the conflicts in West Asia and the Black Sea region which have impacted maritime trade and the safety and security of Indian seafarers."
Reaffirming their ties, the two leaders committed to "remain engaged in an effort to strengthen further the Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership between the two countries," the statement added.
Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian landed in Delhi to attend the BRICS Summit.
This is the first visit by an Iranian President to India in over eight years.
Pezeshkian is scheduled to hold bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 6.15 p.m. local time Friday to advance two-way trade and strengthen overall ties.
His participation at the BRICS Summit and bilateral talks with Modi holds significance as it comes at a time when tensions are rife in the Middle East and energy market disruptions have shaken the economy worldwide.
Speaking to DW about the BRICS Summit, former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor said that the expansion of the bloc has made it the voice of the Global South.
The BRICS coalition started out with four member countries; Brazil, Russia, India and China but now has 11 members and partner countries after the economic bloc decided to open up membership for more countries in 2023.
Tharoor noted that while Iran joined the coalition, US strategic partners Egypt and Ethiopia also joined.
"The expansion that took place in Johannesburg turned out to be one in which both sets of geopolitical points of view were accommodated," Tharoor noted in an interview with DW.
He argued that, "in some ways the expansion has made it much more the voice of the global south."
However, he also said that while the majority of the world is represented in the new 11-member BRICS, the chances of having a consensus has also decreased.
"I would say that BRICS is functioning, but the contradictions remain, and some contradictions have become even more apparent," he said.
He said that when BRICS leaders met this year, they "could not agree on any particular language, and so the chair, India, issued a chair statement instead… it wasn't just Iran, it was also Ukraine that they couldn't agree on."
Tharoor noted that the bloc has a "built-in set of geopolitical divergences which will crop up whenever issues divide the members."
Russian President Vladimir Putin landed in Delhi on Friday to attend the BRICS Summit being held at the Bharat Mandapam on September 12 and 13.
He will be meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the afternoon. Talks are expected to focus on enhancing cooperation in a range of areas, including defence, energy, technology, pharmaceuticals and people-to-people exchanges.
"Warmly welcome President Vladimir Putin of Russia for the 18th BRICS Summit. He was received by MoS K V Singh at the airport. India and Russia share multifaceted and longstanding ties anchored in Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a post on X.
This is Putin's first in-person participation at a BRICS Summit held outside Russia since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Later in the evening, Modi will also be holding a bilateral talk with Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian.
