Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in the Indian capital on Friday ahead of an 11-member BRICS summit set to be dominated by wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, as well as economic challenges.

Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian were due to hold talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while Chinese President Xi Jinping was also expected to meet him on the sidelines of the two-day meeting, according to Indian diplomatic sources.

Putin arrived at Palam Air Force Station in New Delhi, where he was greeted by India’s Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh, according to footage broadcast by Russia’s Ria Novosti news agency.

For China’s Xi, it will be his first visit to India since 2019 and marks the biggest step yet in a cautious thaw between the rival neighbours, six years after a deadly military clash along their disputed Himalayan border.

Ties between the nuclear-armed Asian giants have been warming again recently, with flights, visas and high-level contacts gradually being restored.

However, deep mistrust remains, with their contested frontier, a widening trade deficit and strategic rivalry still complicating ties.

‘Fault line’

Posters of a beaming Modi line streets across New Delhi to welcome leaders, with heavy deployments of security forces across the capital and widespread traffic restrictions in central districts. Delhi police have urged people to be patient and cooperative.

BRICS was created in 2009 as a forum for major emerging economies seeking greater influence in institutions dominated by Western powers.

It has since expanded and now includes Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — three countries with sharply differing positions on the war launched by the United States and Israel in February.

“The Gulf conflict is going to be the central fault line this time during the BRICS summit,” said Harsh V. Pant of India’s Observer Research Foundation.

“What was seen until last year as an achievement — the expansion of BRICS — today looks like a big constraint on BRICS,” Pant said.

It will be Pezeshkian’s first visit to India as Iranian president, and will put the Middle East conflict firmly on the agenda.

“The war in Iran will provide a stern test of the (expanded) group’s cohesion,” said Shilan Shah of Capital Economics, noting the failure of the BRICS foreign ministers to agree on a joint statement when they met in New Delhi in May.

India maintains cordial relations with Iran and Israel, but is also careful to strike a delicate balance in its ties with Washington.

India has navigated the energy crisis caused by the Iran war in part by turning to Russia, one of its most important strategic partners and its most controversial fuel supplier in recent years as the war against Ukraine drags on.

Putin last visited India in December 2025, but he also met Modi in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, this month.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Kyiv this month, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was “grateful to India for its commitment to ending this unjust war”. (FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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A meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin has started in Beijing, Chinese state media report.

Xi welcomed Putin to the Chinese capital on Wednesday, shaking hands with the Russian leader outside the Great Hall of the People before their talks, video by Russian media showed.

Before entering the Great Hall, Putin and Xi walked down a red carpet, rolled out to greet the Russian leader, and stood as a military band played both their countries’ national anthems.

Putin began the talks by hailing the “strong, positive” momentum in cooperation between Russia and China, according to Russian media.

“Even amid unfavourable external factors, our cooperation and economic cooperation is showing strong, positive momentum,” Putin told Xi.

Addressing Putin, Xi lauded the “unyielding relationship” between China and Russia.

“We have been able to continuously deepen our political mutual trust and strategic coordination with a resilience that remains unyielding despite trials and tribulations,” Xi told Putin, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.

The Chinese leader also addressed the US-Israel war on Iran, telling his Russian counterpart that further conflict was “inadvisable” and a ceasefire was necessary.

“A comprehensive ceasefire is of utmost urgency, resuming hostilities is even more inadvisable and maintaining negotiations is particularly important,” Xi said, according to Xinhua.

In a video address released before meeting Xi, Putin said Russia and China were prepared to cooperate with each other on the “core interests ‌of ⁠the two countries, including the protection of sovereignty and national unity”, the Reuters news agency reports.

Both countries are actively expanding ⁠ties in economy, politics and defence, Putin said, adding that “a close” and “strategic” connection between Moscow and Beijing ⁠was playing “a stabilising role” in global relations.

“We are not aligning against anyone, but working ⁠for the cause of peace and universal prosperity,” Putin said.

Putin is being accompanied by a large delegation of Russian businesspeople and government leaders, and the Kremlin has announced that the two leaders will sign some 40 different agreements, covering everything from the economy and tourism to education. (Al Jazeera)

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Sri Lankan Ambassador to Russia, Pakir Amza says President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has expressed interest in joining the intergovernmental organization, BRICS, in a letter to the Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

“Sri Lanka expressed its interest in joining the BRICS family in a letter to President Vladimir Putin from President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. We have also approached other BRICS countries with a request to join as a partner country and are awaiting their positive response,” Ambassador Pakir Amza told Russian media, RIA Novosti.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake sent a letter to Putin in October, the Ambassador specified.

In the same month, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath had also announced that Sri Lanka had decided to apply for membership in BRICS and the New Development Bank. According to him, Colombo views this organization as an effective partnership for achieving aspirations of mutually beneficial cooperation, peace, and development through strengthening comprehensive multilateralism within the framework of the UN Charter.

It was also reported in December last year that the Sri Lankan president approached Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting support for the country’s application to join BRICS.

BRICS currently comprises ten countries with a combined population of 3.6 billion people. These nations account for over 40% of the world’s oil production and about a quarter of global goods exports. (Newswire/ RIA Novosti)

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In a message to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that he expects the bilateral relationship between the two countries would deepen under the leadership of his Sri Lankan counterpart.

The Russian President’s message was conveyed during a meeting between the Russian Ambassador to Sri Lanka Levan S. Dzhagaryan and President Anura Kumara Dissanayake today.

According to the President’s Media Division (PMD), the Russian Ambassador called on President Dissanayake at the Presidential Secretariat this morning (Oct 01). 

During the meeting, Ambassador Dzhagaryan extended his warm congratulations to President Dissanayake on his recent election and delivered a personal message from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The discussions further focused on strengthening the longstanding bilateral relations between Sri Lanka and Russia. 

Both parties highlighted the importance of enhancing cooperation in key areas such as trade, investment, culture, and education while reaffirming their commitment to deepening diplomatic ties for the mutual benefit of both nations. (Newswire)

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has landed in North Korea for a rare visit, his first visit in 24 years, that signals the two countries’ deepening alignment and Moscow’s need to source weapons from Pyongyang to sustain its war on Ukraine.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally greeted Putin at the plane ramp as he arrived in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang in the early hours of Wednesday morning local time, video footage of his arrival showed.

State media RIA reported that the two leaders talked animatedly with each other for several minutes before reaching their motorcade.

The pair then rode together to the Kumsusan State Guest House where Putin will be staying, according to North Korean state media KCNA, and the two leaders “exchanged their pent-up innermost thoughts and opened their minds to more surely develop (North Korea-Russia) relations in conformity with the common desire and will of the peoples of the two countries.”

After arriving at the guesthouse, they held a “friendly chat,” KCNA added.

The streets of Pyongyang were decked out with Russian flags and posters of Putin ahead of his first visit to the country since 2000. This week’s visit is a rare overseas trip for Putin since he launched the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and a key moment for Kim, who has not hosted another world leader in his politically isolated country since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Putin’s visit will be closely watched across the world and is expected to cement further the burgeoning partnership between the two powers that is founded on their shared animosity toward the West and driven by Moscow’s need for munitions for its war in Ukraine.

Following his visit to North Korea, Putin is scheduled to travel to Hanoi in a display of Communist-governed Vietnam’s ties to Russia that is likely to rankle the United States.

Putin’s trip to North Korea will have a “very eventful” agenda, his aide Yuri Ushakov said during a press conference Monday. Both leaders plan to sign a new strategic partnership, Ushakov said.

Ushakov insisted the agreement is not provocative or aimed against other countries, but is meant to ensure greater stability in northeast Asia. He said the new agreement will replace documents signed between Moscow and Pyongyang in 1961, 2000 and 2001.

Satellite imagery from Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies showed preparations for a large parade in Pyongyang’s central square. One image was of a grandstand being constructed on the eastern side of Kim Il Sung Square, the site where all major parades in North Korea are held. In an earlier image, taken on June 5, North Koreans can be seen practicing marching formations.

US national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday the Biden administration wasn’t “concerned about the trip” itself, but added, “What we are concerned about is the deepening relationship between these two countries.”

The US, South Korea and other countries have accused North Korea of providing substantial military aid to Russia’s war effort in recent months, while observers have raised concerns that Moscow may be violating international sanctions to aid Pyongyang’s development of its nascent military satellite program. Both countries have denied North Korean arms exports.

Putin’s trip reciprocates one Kim made last September, when the North Korean leader traveled in his armored train to Russia’s far eastern region, for a visit that included stops at a factory that produces fighter jets and a rocket-launch facility.

It also comes as tensions remain high on the Korean peninsula amid heightened international concern about the North Korean leader’s intentions as he ramped up bellicose language and scrapped a longstanding policy of seeking peaceful reunification with South Korea.

South Korea fired warning shots on Tuesday after North Korean soldiers working in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas briefly crossed into the South, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second incident of its kind in the last two weeks. (CNN)

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Vladimir Putin has claimed a landslide victory in Russia’s presidential vote, as thousands in the country and around the world protested against his deepening dictatorship, the war in Ukraine and a stage-managed election that could have only one winner.

In a vote denounced by the United States as “obviously not free nor fair”, Putin won 87% of the vote, according to exit polling published by the state-run Russian Public Opinion Research Center and the Public Opinion Foundation.

In a speech at his campaign headquarters on Sunday evening, Putin brushed off western criticism of the elections, telling his supporters it was “expected”.

“What did you want, for them to applaud us? They’re fighting with us in an armed conflict … their goal is to contain our development. Of course they’re ready to say anything,” he said.

The war was front and centre in his victory speech, as Putin claimed he was securing the border from recent raids by pro-Ukrainian military units and said that his main tasks as president would be the war in Ukraine “strengthening defence capacity and the military”.

Asked about the potential for a direct conflict with Nato, he said: “I think that everything is possible in the modern world … everyone understands that this would be one step from a full-scale third world war. I don’t think that anyone is interested in that.”

He also responded for the first time to the death of Alexei Navalny, claiming he had given approval to exchange the Kremlin critic for Russian prisoners in the west shortly before his death. “Unfortunately, what happened happened,” he said. “I agreed under one condition: we swap him, and he doesn’t come back. But that’s life.”

After counting 75% of the votes, Russia’s electoral commission said Putin was leading with 87.14% of the vote. In second place was the Communist party candidate, Nikolai Kharitonov.

The government claimed turnout was the highest in history at 74% of the electorate. Putin’s previous highest result came in 2018, when he purported to earn 76.7% of the vote with a 67.5% turnout.

As Putin sought a public mandate for his war in Ukraine and a fifth presidential term, the Kremlin’s electoral machine sought to boost his share of the vote and turnout to near farcical levels, posting results that used to appear only in Russia’s most despotic regions such as Chechnya.

In the face of Putin’s predictable victory, Russia’s embattled opposition sought to put together its own show of strength. Long queues formed at several polling stations in Moscow and other Russian cities as people took up a call from Navalny’s widow to head to the polls at noon on Sunday.

At an appearance at the Russian embassy in Berlin, Yulia Navalnaya urged her supporters to appear en masse in the symbolic show of strength, labelled “noon against Putin”. Her husband endorsed the plan before he died suddenly in an Arctic prison a month ago.

Navalnaya was greeted with huge applause and chants from voters and thanked people for turning up to honour her husband. “You give me hope that everything is not in vain, that we will still fight,” she said in a post on Sunday. She said she had written “Navalny” on her ballot paper.

The elections were quickly criticised by western countries. The US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said: “The elections are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in an address on Sunday evening, said Putin had become “addicted to power”.

“This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any,” he said. “This person must end up in the dock in The Hague. This is what we must ensure, anyone in the world who values life and decency.”

The German foreign ministry wrote in a post on X that the “pseudo-election in #Russia is neither free nor fair, the result will surprise nobody. Putin’s rule is authoritarian, he relies on censorship, repression & violence. The ‘election’ in the occupied territories of #Ukraine is null and void & another breach of international law.”

Navalny’s team called on voters to spoil their ballot papers, write “Alexei Navalny” across the voting slip or vote for one of the three candidates standing against Putin, though the opposition regards them as Kremlin “puppets”.

Reports from the ground suggested that queues suddenly formed at numerous polling stations across Russia’s big cities as the clock struck midday.

Leonid Volkov, a Navalny aide who was attacked by an unknown assailant with a hammer in Vilnius last week, said several thousand queues had formed at midday at polling stations across the country.

Ruslan Shaveddinov of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation said: “We showed ourselves, all of Russia and the whole world that Putin is not Russia, that Putin has seized power in Russia.”

En route to Putin’s win, Russia disqualified anti-war candidates, launched an unparalleled get-out-the-vote campaign targeted at state workers, and spent more than £1bn on a propaganda drive, according to leaked documents shared with the Guardian.

The Russian leader has faced no meaningful contest after the authorities barred two candidates who had voiced their opposition to the war in Ukraine. Three other politicians running in the election did not directly question Putin’s authority and their participation was meant to add an air of legitimacy to the race.

Long queues also formed at noon in places popular among Russian émigrés such as Berlin, Yerevan in Armenia, London and the Thai island of Phuket. Hundreds of thousands of Russians are estimated to have left the country since the start of the invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.

“This action was Navalny’s last wish. We just had to come today at noon,” said Dmitry, a Russian voter who moved to Phuket shortly after the start of the war in Ukraine. He asked for his last name to be withheld for fear of repercussions.

The German broadcaster Deutsche Welle estimated that more than 2,000 voters turned up for the midday protest outside the Russian embassy in Berlin.

On Friday Russian prosecutors threatened any voters who took part in the “noon against Putin” action with five years in prison. In the southern city of Kazan, police detained more than 20 voters who had joined the protest, according to the independent rights monitor OVD-Info. Arrests were also reported in Moscow and St Petersburg.

Russians had made individual acts of protest, including pouring dye into ballot boxes and arson attacks at polling stations, in the preceding days.

Ella Pamfilova, Russia’s election commissioner, said those who spoiled ballots were “bastards”, and the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said those responsible could face treason sentences of 20 years. Russia’s interior ministry said it had filed 155 administrative charges and opened 61 criminal cases during the elections, including 21 cases of obstructing voters’ rights.

Stanislav Andreychuk, a co-chair of the Golos independent election watchdog, said the pressure on voters from law enforcement had reached absurd levels.

“It’s the first time in my life that I’ve seen such absurdities and I’ve been observing elections for 20 years,” Andreychuk wrote on Telegram, referring to the actions of police who he said were checking ballots before they were cast.

Under constitutional changes that he orchestrated in 2020, Putin is eligible to seek two more six-year terms after his latest expires next year, potentially allowing him to remain in power until 2036.

By 2029 his tenure will have surpassed that of Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union for 29 years, making Putin the country’s longest-serving leader since the Russian empire. (The Guardian)

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According to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, a decree approving the Russian Federation’s new foreign policy framework was signed. The revised national foreign policy idea was given the go by the President who also praised relations with India. He declared the expansion of India-related commercial, investment, and technology connections. 

India had found itself in a precarious diplomatic situation throughout the Ukraine-Russia conflict, steadfastly maintaining relations with both Moscow and its friends in the West as well as Kyiv. The two nations had recently celebrated 75 years of diplomatic ties and had continued their strong strategic, military, and economic interaction. President Vladimir Putin has selected China and India as its primary allies on the international stage in this new foreign policy strategy that was announced on 31st March. The declaration was made only a few days after Chinese Prime Minister Xi Jinping visited Russia to strengthen the “no limits” alliance that had been proclaimed the previous year.

Russia will continue to forge a uniquely favorable strategic partnership with the Republic of India in order to deepen and broaden cooperation in all sectors on a mutually advantageous basis. Russia will place special emphasis on boosting bilateral trade, bolstering investment and technological ties, and ensuring their resistance to the divisive actions of unfriendly states and their alliances.

Russia intends to establish an all-encompassing “especially privileged strategic cooperation” with India. Despite various situations happening since last year, relations between India and Russia remained solid. India has increased its imports of Russian crude oil during the past few months. Russia has been India’s main source of weaponry, providing close to 50% of the country’s total arms imports between 2016 and 2020.

Strengthening strategic cooperation and expanding economic and other links with India, is one of Russia’s main areas in Eurasia, according to the revised Concept of Foreign Policy. The entirety of Europe and Asia make up the largest continent on Earth, which is known as Eurasia. Russian support for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and RIC (Russia, India, China) was also stated in the concept.

According to the document, the Russian Federation intends to prioritize strengthening the capacity and increasing the international role of the interstate associations of BRICS, SCO, CIS, the EAEU, the CSTO, the RIC, and other international organizations as well as mechanisms with significant Russian participation, according to the document. As a result, the world order will be better able to reflect the reality of a multipolar world.

The text emphasizes that Moscow seeks “peaceful cohabitation” and a “balancing of interests” with Washington and begs for Russia to uphold “strategic stability” with America. (DB)

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