Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on Friday (11 September 2026). The meeting took place at Bharat Mandapam, hours after Putin arrived in the capital for a three day visit. This was their second meeting in under two weeks, after they met on the margins of the 26th SCO Summit in Bishkek on August 31.
The two leaders discussed the full range of the India Russia Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership, covering political, economic, defence, energy, space, mobility and people to people cooperation. Talks touched on expanding industrial cooperation in rail and tunnelling and the steel value chain, improving market access for Indian companies in Russia, strengthening civil nuclear cooperation across the fuel cycle, and increasing the mobility of skilled Indian labour to Russia. Modi and Putin also discussed cooperation on critical minerals and fertilizers through strategic joint ventures and reaffirmed an ambitious bilateral trade target of 100 billion dollars by 2030, alongside regional issues including the conflicts in West Asia and the Black Sea region and their effect on maritime trade and the safety of Indian seafarers.
As a gesture during the meeting, Modi presented Putin with a Russian translation of the Thirukkural, the ancient Tamil work of ethical verse attributed to the poet philosopher Thiruvalluvar. The edition, published by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil and translated by Naira Mkrtchyan, carries the original Tamil text with transliteration and Russian translation side by side. The Thirukkural spans 1,330 couplets across 133 chapters and is widely regarded as a secular, universal code of conduct.
Putin was received at the airport earlier this morning by Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh. The bilateral came a day ahead of the formal opening of the 18th BRICS Summit on September 12 and 13 at Bharat Mandapam, where India is hosting as Chair for the fourth time. Other leaders expected at the summit include Chinese President Xi Jinping, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
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