Photo : PTI
PM Narendra Modi, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and others ahead of the 18th BRICS Summit 2026, in New Delhi.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes world leaders to Bharat Mandapam for the BRICS Summit, New Delhi is playing one of the most rare diplomatic acts. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Chinese President Xi Jinping all in the city, that too at a time when Delhi is finalising a bilateral trade deal with the United States. Washington keeps threatening 100 per cent tariffs on the BRICS club. So how does India, also a QUAD member, pull this off? Is this a contradiction, or a strategy? We asked foreign policy experts to unpack the logic behind this. Every expert here converges on the same core idea: India isn’t choosing a side, it’s refusing to let anyone force the choice.