Bilats, brush-bys, pull-asides: The secret art of summitry at BRICS
The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi is expected to feature a mix of formal bilateral meetings, informal "pull-asides," and corridor conversations among visiting leaders.
Key anticipated interactions include a bilateral between India's Prime Minister and the Russian President, and a possible meeting between India's Prime Minister and the Chinese President.
With BRICS now an 11-member grouping, India is required to balance a wide range of overlapping and sometimes competing interests — geopolitical, trade, energy, and global-governance-related — across the bloc's membership.
Summit choreography, personal engagement, and diplomatic signalling are described as tools India is using to build consensus among a more heterogeneous membership than the original BRIC/BRICS founders.
Multilateral Summit Diplomacy — Formats and Terminology
Multilateral summits combine a formal plenary structure with informal side interactions, a distinction relevant to understanding how consensus is actually built at groupings like BRICS, the G20, or the SCO.
Key Details
- A "bilateral" (or "bilat") is a formally scheduled one-on-one meeting between two leaders, distinct from a "pull-aside" or "brush-by," which are unscheduled or lightly scheduled informal exchanges on the margins of a summit, often used when a full bilateral cannot be accommodated on a crowded schedule.
- Multilateral summits typically produce a consensus outcome document (e.g., a "Declaration"), which in groupings without a binding treaty structure (like BRICS) reflects political commitments rather than legally enforceable obligations.
- "Sherpas" — senior officials who prepare the substantive agenda and draft language before a summit — are the mechanism through which most negotiation actually happens before leaders arrive; summit-floor diplomacy such as bilaterals mainly resolves residual or politically sensitive issues.
- This structure is common to G7, G20, BRICS, and SCO summits, though BRICS and SCO summits function without a permanent secretariat, unlike ASEAN or the EU.
The described mix of scheduled bilaterals and informal pull-asides at the New Delhi summit reflects the standard operating grammar of leader-level multilateral diplomacy, applied here to BRICS's first summit under its expanded 11-member composition.
BRICS Membership Expansion and Coordination Challenges
BRICS expanded significantly in 2024-25, transforming it from a five-member grouping into an 11-member bloc with a more diverse set of economic and strategic interests, which is the structural reason summit-level coordination has become more demanding.
Key Details
- Original BRIC grouping formed 2006 (first leaders' summit: Yekaterinburg, Russia, 2009); South Africa joined in 2010-11, forming BRICS.
- 2024 expansion (effective 1 January 2024): Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates admitted as full members; Saudi Arabia was invited but completed accession only in July 2025.
- Indonesia became a full member effective January 2025.
- A separate "BRICS partner country" category was introduced at the 2024 Kazan Summit, including states such as Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam — a tier below full membership, used partly to manage the pace and scale of further expansion.
Balancing an 11-member grouping (which includes states with divergent positions on issues such as West Asian geopolitics and global trade architecture) is precisely what necessitates the informal, relationship-based diplomacy — pull-asides, bilaterals — described in this account of the New Delhi summit.
India's Strategic Autonomy and Multi-Alignment
India's simultaneous engagement with the Russian President, the Chinese President, and Western partners at forums like BRICS reflects its long-standing foreign policy doctrine of strategic autonomy, evolved from Cold War-era non-alignment into contemporary "multi-alignment."
The described diplomatic balancing act at the summit is the practical, day-to-day expression of India's strategic autonomy doctrine — engaging major and middle powers individually while chairing a multilateral platform that includes some of them as members.
- BRICS founding: BRIC formed 2006; first leaders' summit, Yekaterinburg, 2009; South Africa joined 2010-11.
- 2024-25 expansion: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, UAE (2024); Indonesia (January 2025); Saudi Arabia (July 2025) — current full membership: 11 states.
- BRICS partner-country category introduced: 2024 Kazan Summit.
- NAM founded: 1961, Belgrade; India a founding member.
- 18th BRICS Summit: New Delhi, September 12-13, 2026, under India's 2026 chairmanship.
- India is simultaneously a member of BRICS and the Quad — groupings with differing geopolitical orientations.