Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to hold a bilateral meeting on Friday (September 11) on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit 2026 in New Delhi, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
The 18th BRICS Summit will take place at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on September 12 and 13. India took over the BRICS presidency on January 1 this year, becoming the grouping’s chair for the fourth time.
If Xi visits India, it will be his first trip to the country since his informal meeting with PM Modi in Mamallapuram in 2019. Putin has confirmed his attendance, while Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to take part. PM Modi will host the summit. Other leaders expected at the summit include South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is also expected to attend. PM Modi and Putin most recently met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. It was their first face-to-face meeting since the annual India-Russia Summit in New Delhi last December. “Every day spent perpetuating war pushes humanity backwards, and every step taken towards peace fills the whole of humanity with new hope and enthusiasm.
We must move from endless war towards the end of war, which is very necessary for the well-being of humanity,” Modi said in televised opening remarks at the meeting with Putin.
