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India’s prime minister Narendra Modi has described talks with Vladimir Putin as “insightful” after the two leaders spent about 45 minutes together in the Russian president’s armoured limousine during a regional summit in China.
The unusual meeting took place on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in the port city of Tianjin, where Mr Modi and Mr Putin joined China’s president Xi Jinping for discussions seen as a counterweight to US influence in Asia. Photographs released from the summit showed the three leaders walking together in an apparent show of unity.
Mr Modi later posted a picture of himself alongside Mr Putin inside the Russian leader’s Aurus limousine, writing: “Conversations with him are always insightful.”
According to the Kremlin, the two men spoke one-on-one for about 45 minutes in the car before holding formal talks with their delegations.
At their bilateral meeting, Mr Modi said: “Even in the most difficult situations, India and Russia have always walked shoulder to shoulder. Our close cooperation is important not only for the people of both countries but also for global peace, stability and prosperity.”
Mr Putin addressed the Indian leader as a “dear friend” and praised the decades-long partnership between the two countries.
“Russia and India have maintained special relations for decades, friendly and trusting. This is the foundation for the development of our relations in the future,” he said.
The encounter comes at a time of mounting trade tensions between Washington and New Delhi.
US President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs of up to 50 per cent on Indian imports, saying the move is punishment for India’s continued purchases of Russian oil and military equipment.
“What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us … until now a totally one-sided relationship,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform as Mr Modi met Russian president along with China’s president Xi Jinping.
India has become one of the largest buyers of Russian crude since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, taking advantage of discounted prices as Western countries introduced sanctions and price caps.
Roughly 37 per cent of India’s oil imports now come from Russia, according to analysts and officials. New Delhi has defended the trade as essential for meeting the needs of its 1.4 billion people and dismissed Washington’s penalties as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”.
Despite US pressure, India and Russia have expanded economic ties, with bilateral trade reaching a record $68.7bn in the past financial year. The two governments have also explored ways to settle payments in rupees and roubles to reduce reliance on the US dollar.
Mr Modi, who last met Mr Putin in October 2024 at a Brics summit in Russia, reiterated his call for peace in Ukraine and welcomed “recent efforts aimed at stopping the war”. On Saturday, he spoke by telephone with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to reaffirm his support for a negotiated settlement.
Mr Putin, meanwhile, thanked China and India for their efforts to “facilitate the resolution of the Ukrainian crisis”, but said Russia had no plans to meet President Zelensky despite Mr Trump’s repeated demands for talks. The US president has claimed he could end the war “in one day”.
He is expected to travel to India later this year for the annual bilateral summit, underlining a partnership that dates back to the Cold War and remains central to New Delhi’s strategy of balancing relations with rival powers.
