New Delhi (AFP) - Leaders from Russia and Iran were in India for talks on Friday, ahead of a BRICS summit dominated by conflict and economic challenges, which Chinese President Xi Jinping will also attend.

Wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, as well as global trade turbulence and oil are expected on the agenda at the two-day annual summit that opens on Saturday, when Xi is set to arrive.

It will be Xi’s first visit to India since 2019, and marks the biggest step yet in a cautious thaw between the rival neighbours, six years after a deadly military clash along their disputed Tibetan border.

Ties between the nuclear-armed Asian giants have been warming again, with flights, visas and high-level contacts gradually being restored.

“China stands ready to work with India… by strengthening communication, enhancing cooperation, and properly handling differences,” Beijing’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Friday.

Deep mistrust remains, with their contested Himalayan frontier, a widening trade deficit and strategic rivalry still complicating ties.

Dozens of Tibetans protested in New Delhi on Friday – exiles, like their Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since fleeing a Chinese crackdown in 1959 – waving placards against Xi’s visit.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due to hold talks on Friday with President Vladimir Putin, who last visited India in December 2025. Moscow is one of New Delhi’s most important strategic partners.

“One should engage in debate and friendship only with the virtuous, and nothing whatsoever with the unvirtuous,” Modi wrote Friday, in a social media message in Sanskrit to welcome leaders to the 11-nation summit.

Posters of a beaming Modi line streets across New Delhi, with heavy deployments of security forces across the capital and widespread traffic restrictions.

BRICS was created in 2009 as a forum for major emerging economies seeking greater influence in institutions dominated by Western powers.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who arrived in New Delhi on Friday and will hold talks with Modi, said that “BRICS was established to counter unilateralism”, according to Tehran’s IRNA news agency.

- ‘Fault line’ -

As well as Iran, BRICS includes Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – countries with sharply differing positions on the war launched by the United States and Israel in February.

All three have been admitted to the group in recent years, joining founding member states that include India, China and Russia.

“The Gulf conflict is going to be the central fault line this time during the BRICS summit,” said Harsh V. Pant of India’s Observer Research Foundation.

“What was seen until last year as an achievement – the expansion of BRICS – today looks like a big constraint on BRICS,” Pant said.

Pezeshkian’s participation – his first visit to India as Iranian president – will put the Middle East conflict firmly on the agenda.

“The war in Iran will provide a stern test of the group’s cohesion,” said Shilan Shah of Capital Economics, noting the failure of the BRICS foreign ministers to agree on a joint statement when they met in New Delhi in May.

UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan is also expected, as is Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

India maintains cordial relations with Iran and Israel, but is also careful to strike a delicate balance in its ties with Washington.

New Delhi has navigated the energy crisis sparked by the US-Iran war in part by turning to Russia for fuel despite Western sanctions as the war against Ukraine drags on.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Kyiv this month, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was “grateful to India for its commitment to ending this unjust war”.

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