Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday at the BRICS summit in Russia's Kazan. This will be their first meeting since the 2020 Galwan Valley clash, which significantly strained relations between the two nations.
This follows a recent agreement to end the standoff between the two armies in Eastern Ladakh on Monday. China confirmed the deal on Tuesday.
On the summit's first day, Modi also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, advocating for peace in Ukraine and offering India's assistance to help achieve a truce in the ongoing conflict.
China's Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other world leaders arrived in Kazan on Tuesday for the summit. For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the three-day meeting also offers a powerful way to demonstrate the failure of US-led efforts to isolate Russia over its actions in Ukraine.
The alliance that initially included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa has expanded rapidly to embrace Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Turkiye, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have formally applied to join, and a few others have expressed interest in joining.
Observers see the BRICS summit as part of the Kremlin's efforts to showcase support from the Global South amid spiralling tensions with the West while expanding economic and financial ties.
Proposed projects include creating a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network SWIFT and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners.
Putin, who will hold about 20 bilateral meetings on the sidelines, conferred with Xi, Modi and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday ahead of the summit's opening.