BRICS Needs a Sentence Both Capitals Can Sign

Vladimir Putin landed in New Delhi early Friday for the 18th BRICS summit, which opens Saturday. The Hindu reported a likely Modi bilateral hours after arrival, on defence and related files. Officials have also scheduled Modi with Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian today. Xi Jinping is expected — Reuters called it his first visit to India in seven years. Bloomberg said this is Putin’s first in-person BRICS summit outside Russia since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Those are landings. They are not cohesion.

The dominant copy is pageantry under strain: an 11-member bloc, wars in West Asia and Ukraine, tariffs, local-currency trade. The residual is narrower. BRICS sells itself as a coordinating centre. It operates by consensus. Iran has been a member since 2024. The UAE is a member. After Iranian missiles struck the Emirates, Reuters reported, Abu Dhabi suspended all trade and financial transactions with Iran in August. If the gathering is a test of whether the expanded bloc can hold a common political line, the instrument is a Delhi declaration that both capitals can sign in every paragraph. Sherpas do not have that sentence yet.

May already showed the gap

In May, BRICS foreign ministers met in New Delhi and failed to issue a joint statement. AP recorded host India’s explanation: “differing views among some members” on the Middle East. India put out a chair’s statement and an outcome document instead. ThePrint later identified two disputed paragraphs in a longer draft, including language that the Gaza Strip is an inseparable part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Sergey Lavrov had urged the Iranian and UAE ministers to talk directly. They did not close the file.

That is the precedent the weekend has to beat. Indian officials told The Indian Express they want a Delhi declaration that is a consensus document in all the paragraphs, and that they are optimistic. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Iran-UAE differences have a “negative impact” on drafting, and that he had “no doubts that necessary phrases will be found.” Russia, he added, would help normalise ties if asked. Hope is not a paragraph.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting in Bishkek this month did produce language, signed by Modi, Xi, Putin, and Pezeshkian among others, that condemned the U.S.-Israeli campaign and Western sanctions. Former Indian diplomat Rajiv Bhatia told Reuters that formulation raised hopes. The SCO table does not include the UAE. BRICS does. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is expected in Delhi. Saudi Arabia still sits in an ambiguous role — not full membership, a lower-level delegation, Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan attending. Consensus in a room without Abu Dhabi does not travel.

Friday’s bilaterals can move bilateral files without moving the communiqué. Russia remains a large energy supplier to India; Peskov said trade and economic cooperation would feature with Modi. Pezeshkian’s trip is his first to India as president, a channel into a war that has kept Hormuz as a sanctions and transit gate. A likely Modi-Xi meeting would be their third since a border-easing agreement last year. None of those sessions is a substitute for a sentence on West Asia that Iran and the UAE will both initial.

Markets have priced peace off memoranda before the strait reopened. The February map already treated expanded BRICS as weight with seams. A patchwork of blocs does not require a single communiqué — unless the bloc’s claim is that it can still write one. Michael Kugelman of the Atlantic Council put the irony to Reuters: expansion showed appeal; the new members’ divergences can make the group less effective. Crude above $100 is the economic overlay, not the diplomatic test.

What would mis-price this weekend is treating the photograph of four leaders as proof the alternative centre held. What would confirm it is a published Delhi declaration agreed in all paragraphs, including the war. A repeat of May — a chair’s statement that logs “respective national positions” — would show the opposite. The test is the document. The landings are the queue.