Putin’s meeting with top BRICS journalists on Friday covered a wide array of subjects, including Russia’s relations with Israel that were analyzed here, but the present piece will only focus on the praise that he heaped on India in order to debunk false Alt-Media perceptions of it being a “Trojan Horse”. In the order that he mentioned India during his meeting, Putin first began by describing it as a “powerhouse with record positive growth” whose “expanding economic potential will lead to their bigger global influence.”
He shortly thereafter added that “The Prime Minister of India put it best. He said BRICS is not an anti-Western alliance; it is simply non-Western. This distinction is very important and has great meaning.” This was followed by a brief history of BRICS where Putin reminded everyone that it began as RIC when Russia, India, and China came together in St. Petersburg at the turn of the century. India is then described as the country with the third-largest purchasing power parity in the world.
Putin mentioned India alongside China, Brazil, and South Africa later on during the meeting as the countries with whom Russia is discussing the use of digital currencies. He also spoke highly about Russians’ interest in Indian films when he was asked about it by one of that country’s journalists, which led to him segueing into a remark about how high in demand Indian pharmaceuticals are in Russia. A few words were then said some time afterwards about India’s interest in Russia’s Northern Sea Route.
He then rounded everything out near the end by agreeing with an Indian journalist that his country, China, Brazil, and others could potentially help resolve the Ukrainian Conflict before expressing optimism about BRICS’ future. What can be seen from the preceding paragraphs of praise that Putin heaped on India is that he sincerely respects it and Modi. They’re considered trusted and reliable partners unlike the speculation that some have spread over the past few years about them being American puppets.
In fact, Indo-US ties took a hit in the day before his meeting with those top BRICS journalists after the Justice Department charged an Indian official in connection with summer 2023’s alleged attempt to assassinate a Delhi-designated terrorist-separatist with dual US citizenship on American soil. It’s beyond the scope of this analysis to elaborate on that scandal, but interested readers can learn more about it here, which also discusses the Canadian dimension of this larger issue that’s much more intense.
As Putin said when channeling Modi, “BRICS is not an anti-Western alliance; it is simply non-Western”, which is important for observers to remember since it’s commonly misportrayed as anti-Western. That was always a fallacy though since its four founding members and South Africa all had decent relations with the West before 2022, after which Russia’s floundered while the others’ remained fairly positive. New members Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have even better ties with it than the others do.
Spinning India’s close trade and military ties with the US as supposedly being a betrayal of BRICS like some in the Alt-Media Community have done is therefore dishonest. BRICS is just a platform for accelerating financial multipolarity processes, and as explained here last month, countries don’t even have to be members to coordinate their policies with others. By praising India like he did, Putin helped remind everyone of this fact, and hopefully they’ll incorporate it in their future reports about BRICS.
