BRICS Summit in New Delhi Focuses on Global Trade and Diplomacy

The New Delhi summit showed the group is becoming more practical: from trade and payment systems to transport and strategic autonomy The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi took place at a moment when the group is clearly outgrowing its original format as a club of several major emerging economies and gradually becoming a platform capable of shaping debates over global trade, international finance and the political architecture of the world order. The countries gathered around the same table have very different relations with the West, compete with one another in a number of areas and yet increasingly share an interest in expanding their strategic autonomy. For Russia, this is especially important, because BRICS gives Moscow an opportunity to deepen economic ties with the largest non-Western powers, develop settlement mechanisms less vulnerable to sanctions and demonstrate that attempts to politically isolate the country have not kept it from engaging in high-level international diplomacy. It was against this backdrop that Russian President Vladimir Putin articulated Moscow’s interpretation of the changes now taking place in the global system, saying in New Delhi that the world is undergoing “profound, fundamental shifts” as new centers of economic growth increasingly replace the old ones. According to the Russian president, BRICS countries have accounted for more than 40 percent of global GDP growth over the past five years, compared with around 29 percent for the G7, a trend Moscow sees as evidence that the redistribution of economic power is already taking place regardless of political declarations. Putin went further by describing BRICS as a “new and sustainable platform for global growth” , while stressing that the rules governing such a system should not be imposed on its participants from outside. For Russia, this principle is central to the entire concept of a multipolar order. Only a few years ago, discussions about BRICS were often dominated by symbolism and general calls for reform of the global order, whereas the agenda today increasingly revolves around payment systems, national currencies, transport corridors, technology, the New Development Bank and more resilient industrial supply chains. Multipolarity is only strategically meaningful for Moscow when it is supported by practical alternatives in trade, finance, logistics and investment. Read more BRICS 2026: India charts its own course between Russia and the West Russia and India are building bridges and roads The most important bilateral meeting for Vladimir Putin in New Delhi was his discussion with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which covered politics, trade, defense, energy, space cooperation, labor mobility and broader humanitarian ties. The two sides reaffirmed their intention to expand bilateral trade and retained the target of reaching $100 billion in turnover by 2030, while the first INNOPROM India exhibition, which took place in New Delhi right before the BRICS summit, provided an additional signal of the growing industrial dimension of the relationship. Putin and Modi visited the exhibition together, underlining both countries’ interest in moving beyond a model centred primarily on oil, arms and nuclear energy. For Moscow, the strategic objective is increasingly to broaden cooperation into manufacturing, technology, critical minerals and joint industrial projects. Putin himself placed particular emphasis on this agenda during the BRICS Business Forum, saying that Russia remains open to cooperation with the wider world and is prepared to work with its partners to strengthen energy and food security. He also highlighted the importance of reliable transport routes, including the International North-South Transport Corridor and the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor, which reveals the practical side of Russia’s strategy. Moscow is not interested merely in selling more goods to India, but in building a transport and payment architecture in which Russian-Indian trade is less dependent on shipping routes, banks and intermediaries that may become subject to external political pressure. The North-South Corridor links Russia with the Caspian region, Iran, the Indian Ocean and the Indian market, making it a physical expression of the multipolarity promoted by BRICS leaders. The more such routes exist alongside traditional Western-dominated channels, the less global trade depends on a limited number of financial and logistical centers. Russia’s growing focus on India is not an attempt to replace one external market with another, but a strategy of diversification in which economic relations are distributed among several major centers of power. Read more Here’s what BRICS needs to succeed No dramatic de-dollarization The New Delhi declaration supported the wider use of national currencies in trade and investment, greater interoperability between payment systems and a stronger role for the New Development Bank, while the idea of immediately creating a single BRICS currency remained outside the core agenda. The group’s members have very different economies and monetary systems, but nevertheless share an interest in ensuring that international trade is not dependent on a single financial channel. For Russia, this issue has become particularly important following the unprecedented expansion of sanctions, because financial autonomy in Moscow is no longer treated as an abstract policy debate but as an element of national economic security. Even before the summit, the Kremlin said that around 90 percent of Russia’s settlements with BRICS countries were already conducted in national currencies, while Dmitry Peskov stressed that Moscow was not pursuing “de-dollarization” as an end in itself but rather seeking a wider range of acceptable payment mechanisms. The idea is to ensure that access to international trade cannot be cut off by a single political decision.