India getting ready for Xi, Putin visits in September
India is getting ready for visits by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, with both leaders planning to attend the BRICS summit
India is getting ready for visits by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, with both leaders planning to attend the BRICS summit to be held in Delhi on September 12 and 13, sources here said on Wednesday (July 29, 2026). Consultations are continuing with regard to these upcoming high-level visits. On Monday (July 27, 2026) and Tuesday (July 28, 2026), Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri held a series of talks in Beijing, during which both sides discussed “strengthening high-level interactions”. In recent weeks, Chinese officials have also visited India to oversee the arrangements and security preparations for a possible high-level visit. High-level interactions During Mr. Misri’s talks in Beijing with a senior Communist Party of China official Sun Haiyan, who is Vice Minister in the party’s International Department, both sides “expressed commitment to working together to follow through on the common understandings reached by the leaders, strengthen high-level interactions, properly manage differences, and make sustained efforts to foster the improvement and development of bilateral relations,” according to a readout from the Chinese side.
The Ministry of External Affairs said both sides had “discussed ways to deepen implementation of the guidance of the leaders for bilateral relations, including addressing issues of priority to both sides and by promoting political, people-to-people, academic and think-tank exchanges.” Other preparations for a possible visit by Mr. Xi are also underway. In recent weeks, Chinese officials have visited India to oversee arrangements, reflecting a level of attention that is usually not seen when the second-ranked Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who visited India for the G-20 summit in 2023 instead of Mr. Xi, or other senior Chinese officials undertake visits overseas. Mr. Xi did not attend the BRICS summit in Brazil last year, again deputing Mr. Li to represent China in his stead. He did, however, attend the summits in 2023 in South Africa and in 2024 in Russia, where his talks with Mr. Modi paved the way for the subsequent gradual normalisation in relations. Misri had an unusually broad range of meetings during his Beijing visit, in contrast to recent visits that were narrowly focused on ensuring peace along the Line of Actual Control and limited steps in normalisation.
Besides meeting Ms. Sun, he also held talks with Vice Foreign Minister Hua Chunying; Li Wentang, Vice President of the central party school, the Academy of Governance; and Hong Liang, formerly the head of the border affairs department of the Foreign Ministry and currently Deputy Secretary General of the Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), or the upper house of Parliament, which largely deals with people-to-people exchanges with foreign countries. Overlapping agenda Putin’s attendance at the summit was earlier indicated by the Russian side when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited New Delhi for the BRICS foreign ministers meeting in May and discussed “highest level” contacts with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar. India has intensified contacts with BRICS member countries both bilaterally and under the multilateral BRICS umbrella. Official sources here indicated that they expect top leaders of the member countries to attend the summit meeting, though the final details of the visits will be known closer to the date of the summit.
The BriefWire