Modi to meet Xi, Putin in back-to-back diplomacy at BRICS sidelines
Back-to-back bilateral engagements with the Chinese and Russian leaderships were scheduled on the sidelines of a multilateral summit hosted in India.
The agenda for these engagements included the boundary question, trade and investment barriers, and visa/connectivity normalisation.
The engagements take place while a separate trade dispute over tariff levels between India and the United States remains unresolved.
The scheduling illustrates the practice of pursuing parallel, issue-specific bilateral tracks with multiple major powers within a single multilateral setting.
Strategic Autonomy and Multi-Alignment — Evolution from Non-Alignment
India's foreign policy doctrine has evolved from Cold War-era "Non-Alignment" (formalised through the Non-Aligned Movement, NAM, founded 1961 at Belgrade) to what contemporary policy discourse terms "strategic autonomy" or "multi-alignment" — engaging multiple, sometimes rival, powers simultaneously on separate issue-baskets rather than aligning with a single bloc.
Key Details
- NAM was founded in 1961 by leaders including India, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Indonesia, and Ghana, rooted in the Panchsheel principles (1954 India-China agreement) of peaceful coexistence.
- Strategic autonomy is not a treaty-based or codified doctrine; it is a policy orientation reiterated in India's engagement with groupings as diverse as the Quad (with the US, Japan, Australia), the SCO (with China, Russia, Pakistan), BRICS, and the G20.
- India is simultaneously part of the India-Russia "Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership" (since 2010) and the India-US "Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership" (since 2020) — two partnerships with structurally different, sometimes competing, geopolitical logics.
- India is also part of the Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral framework, a format predating BRICS, originally conceived by Russia in the late 1990s to promote a multipolar world order.
Holding separate bilateral meetings with the Chinese and Russian leaderships on the same summit sidelines, while a tariff dispute with the US remains live, is a textbook operationalisation of multi-alignment — engaging each power on its own merits rather than as part of a bloc choice.
India-US Trade Friction — Tariffs Linked to Russian Oil Purchases
Since mid-2025, the United States has imposed steep tariff increases on Indian goods, explicitly citing India's continued purchases of Russian crude oil following Western sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict — creating friction between India's energy-security imperatives and its trade relationship with the US.
Key Details
- The US imposed an initial tariff increase, followed by an additional 25% ad valorem duty effective 27 August 2025, taking the total US tariff on many Indian goods to 50%.
- The stated US rationale was India's status as the largest importer of discounted Russian seaborne crude, which Washington argued indirectly financed the Russian war effort.
- India's official position characterised the tariff action as "unfair, unjustified and unreasonable," defending crude imports as necessary for energy security and price stability for Indian consumers.
- The World Trade Organization's Most Favoured Nation (MFN) principle (Article I, GATT 1994) generally requires uniform tariff treatment among WTO members, absent an FTA or safeguard/anti-dumping justification — making unilateral, country-specific tariff hikes a recurring point of trade-law contention.
The India-US tariff dispute is the direct backdrop against which India's outreach to Russia and China at the summit is being read, since deeper economic engagement with both is, in part, a response to disruption in India's trade relationship with the US.
Multilateral Summit Diplomacy — Sidelines Bilaterals as a Diplomatic Tool
Major multilateral summits (UN General Assembly, G20, SCO, BRICS) are frequently used as venues for bilateral meetings that would otherwise require separate standalone visits, allowing leaders to compress multiple engagements into a single trip — a well-established feature of contemporary summit diplomacy.
Key Details
- Distinguish a "bilateral meeting" (structured talks between two leaders, generally producing a joint statement or agreed outcomes) from a "pull-aside" (a shorter, less formal exchange) — both are common at summit sidelines.
- Summit sidelines diplomacy became especially significant for India-China ties post-2020, since no standalone bilateral summit-level visit occurred for years amid the border standoff, making multilateral platforms (SCO, BRICS, G20) the primary venue for leader-level contact.
- Similarly, the India-Russia relationship maintains a separate Annual Summit mechanism (distinct from meetings on multilateral sidelines), reflecting its "Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership" status.
The scheduling of separate bilateral meetings with the Chinese and Russian leaderships during the same multilateral event reflects the standard practice of using summit sidelines to advance distinct bilateral agendas efficiently.
- NAM founded: 1961, Belgrade; rooted in Panchsheel principles from the 1954 India-China agreement.
- India-Russia "Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership": established 2010.
- India-US "Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership": established 2020.
- US tariffs on India: raised in stages to a total of 50% by 27 August 2025, linked to India's Russian oil purchases.
- WTO MFN principle: Article I of GATT, 1994 (updated text; original GATT 1947).
- RIC (Russia-India-China) trilateral format: conceived in the late 1990s, predates BRICS (2009) as a multipolarity-focused grouping.