Putin meets Modi on Friday with Su-57, S-400 and oil on the table

Vladimir Putin will hold a bilateral meeting with Narendra Modi in New Delhi on Friday, 11 September, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Indian journalists in a virtual briefing. The session sits one day before India opens the 18th BRICS summit at Bharat Mandapam on 12-13 September. It will be Putin's first trip to a BRICS summit on foreign soil since the full-scale war in Ukraine began in February 2022.

Peskov listed the agenda in plain items. Defence: possible sale and technology sharing for the Su-57 fifth-generation fighter, upgrades to the jointly produced BrahMos missile, and remaining deliveries of the S-400 air-defence system in 2026. Energy: Indian purchases of Russian crude, which he said are setting a new record every month, though he refused to give volumes "for understandable reasons." Civil nuclear plants are also under discussion. Trade: more use of national currencies, and an Indian wish to cut a bilateral deficit that crossed $50 billion in 2025-26. Rare earths are a new line. Peskov said both sides are exploring cooperation there.

The two men last met on 31 August on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek. The Indian government called that their first meeting of 2026. Modi said then that he looked forward to welcoming Putin in India. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, on a recent Moscow visit, had already flagged the trade gap and asked for more Indian exports into Russia.

Ukraine will be in the room. Peskov said Russia welcomes India's willingness to help find a settlement and that Moscow's position "broadly corresponded" with India's preference for dialogue. He said Putin will brief Modi on the war. He also said Russia is working to repatriate Indian nationals who have ended up with the Russian military, a file New Delhi has raised more than once.

The U.S. move to threaten 100 percent tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil hung over the briefing. Peskov called that step illegal and unacceptable. For India the tariff threat is not theoretical. Russian barrels have been a large share of the import mix since 2022. A monthly record, if Peskov is right, means the Friday meeting happens at the peak of that dependence, not at its start.

China is the other moving piece. Diplomatic sources in Delhi said Xi Jinping is likely to arrive Saturday and hold his own bilateral with Modi the same day. Beijing has not issued a final public confirmation of Xi's presence. If he comes, the weekend becomes a three-leader stretch: Modi-Putin on Friday, the BRICS plenary on Saturday and Sunday, and a Modi-Xi session in between.

India holds the BRICS chair for 2026. Russia, Peskov said, wants the summit documents to cover security, the economy, finance and culture. A separate Russian comment this week expressed hope that BRICS members can narrow the gap between Iran and the United Arab Emirates over the West Asia war enough to keep joint language intact. That is a drafting problem as well as a political one.

For the defence docket, the useful detail is technology, not the aircraft name. A Su-57 sale without transfer is one deal. A sale with transfer is another. Peskov presented Moscow as open to sharing technology. India has heard that sentence before on other platforms. S-400 deliveries are more concrete: a contract already signed, a schedule that slipped, a promise that 2026 is the year the remaining batteries move.

The deficit is the economic constraint. Fifty billion dollars in Russia's favour is a political fact inside India. Local-currency settlement can hide some dollar risk. It does not, by itself, sell more Indian goods into a sanctioned Russian market. That is the hard item under the friendly language about personal chemistry. Peskov called the two leaders pragmatic and able to discuss sensitive subjects. Friday will show which of those subjects produce paper.