Jaishankar and Lavrov coordinate on Ukraine, Iran and Afghanistan ahead of BRICS

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar held a long meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow this week, covering bilateral work and the wars and crises that now sit on both countries' calendars: Ukraine, Iran and Afghanistan.

Jaishankar put the conversation on X in one sentence. He had discussed bilateral cooperation, regional hotspots, global challenges and multilateral issues. The Russian foreign ministry, quoted by TASS, was more specific. The two sides coordinated approaches to Afghanistan, to the situation around Iran, and to Ukraine. They repeated a pledge to keep working together at the United Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, BRICS and the G20, and to keep a trust-based dialogue at every level.

The Putin meeting the day before

Jaishankar was in Moscow for two days. On Monday he called on President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin and handed over a personal message from Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He also briefed Putin on the latest meeting of the India-Russia Intergovernmental Commission.

The economic list he read out was trade, energy, fertilisers, nuclear cooperation and other files. He told Putin that economic work had grown significantly. The Kremlin quoted Putin saying trade turnover, which had slipped last year, is rising again this year, and that Modi is paying personal attention to the relationship. Putin also pointed to government and parliamentary ties that have run for decades.

Jaishankar told the Russian president that Modi looks forward to seeing him at the SCO summit and then welcoming him to India for the BRICS leaders' meeting on 12 and 13 September. An annual bilateral summit would follow when diaries allow.

Why the timing is tight

The visit sits inside a crowded month. India has just held the 25th round of Special Representatives talks with China in Beijing. The United States has opened a new secondary-sanctions campaign against Iran, named Operation Economic Outcast, and has listed four India-based firms for alleged oil and petrochemical trade. The Strait of Hormuz, which carries a large share of the crude India burns, is still under a contested navigation regime after months of attacks and mine-clearing claims.

Russia remains a major supplier of discounted oil and a partner in nuclear and fertiliser shipments. Those cargoes are exactly the sort of flows Washington's new campaign is built to squeeze when they touch Iran. The Lavrov talks, as described by TASS, put Iran on the same agenda page as Ukraine and Afghanistan. That is the Indian position in compressed form: keep the Russia channel open, keep talking to the West, and treat energy security as a separate file from alliance language.

What was not announced

No new arms package was published. No figure for annual trade was released in the Indian readout. No joint line on a Ukraine ceasefire was issued. The deliverable is the calendar: Putin is expected in New Delhi in mid-September, after an SCO stop, and both foreign ministries say they will keep coordinating inside the clubs that still include both countries.

For New Delhi the test after September will be narrower. Can the energy, fertiliser and nuclear work Jaishankar described survive a tighter US sanctions net around Iran without forcing India to pick a public side in Moscow or Washington? The Moscow meetings put that question on the record. They did not answer it.