Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in New Delhi on September 11 ahead of the BRICS Leaders' Summit. The discussions covered trade, energy, defence and other areas of bilateral cooperation.
The meeting matters because India-Russia ties now operate under two simultaneous pressures: India still depends on Russia for important defence and energy links, while Western sanctions and the war in Ukraine have made those ties more diplomatically costly. Russian crude also remains a major component of India's oil imports.
For India, the policy question is not simply whether ties with Moscow continue, but how they are diversified into civil nuclear energy, fertilizers, manufacturing, railways, steel and critical minerals while New Delhi also deepens relations with the US, Europe and Indo-Pacific partners.