Look at the bigger picture from Putin's meeting with Modi

If you read much of the international coverage of Vladimir Putin’s meeting with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, you probably didn’t get far before encountering the word Ukraine.

And around much of the world, that framing feels oddly narrow. After all, this was a meeting between the leaders of the world’s sixth- and ninth-largest economies, two pivotal actors in the dramatic transformation of global power over the past two decades. Arguably, only China’s Xi Jinping has played a larger role in reshaping the geopolitical landscape.

Yes, Ukraine is a defining issue for Putin. But for Modi, it is not. India is likely the only major power in the global top ten that genuinely refuses to choose sides between the United States and China. That alone makes this summit significant.

The operative word is multipolar.

The oil story

Let’s begin with the topic Western news outlets tend to foreground: Russia's oil exports.

India, which is now the world’s third-largest oil consumer, once imported just 2% of its crude from Russia. Today that figure sits at roughly one-third. This shift is not primarily an act of solidarity with Moscow. It is the product of market logic: Russian oil has become deeply discounted as Western states attempt to restrict it.

With the world’s largest population and enormous developmental demands, Modi cannot ignore cheap energy. But there is also a political message: India rejects the idea that any other power can dictate who it trades with.

That stance has hardened in recent years. When U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on certain Indian imports, the move was received in Delhi not as pressure but as a challenge and an opportunity to demonstrate strategic independence, even if the tariff did sting economically and has changed trade patterns.

India has long maintained a strong partnership with the United States, in large part because its principal rivals - Pakistan and China - traditionally aligned with one another. But that relationship is loosening for several reasons.

Four-dimensional chess

First, India no longer feels compelled to pick sides. It can share leadership with China in forums such as BRICS and the G20, institutions where member states have little appetite for lecturing one another on domestic politics or economic management.

Second, India has developed formidable domestic industries while cultivating global partnerships, including a durable relationship with Russia.

Third, the U.S.–India relationship has become strained by immigration tensions. Indians account for more than two-thirds of America’s H-1B visas for highly skilled workers. Recent U.S. proposals to raise visa processing fees dramatically—into the tens of thousands of dollars—have caused anxiety in India’s tech sector and frustration in Delhi.

The local spin

While Europe and the U.S. interpret the summit primarily through the lens of Ukraine, the leaders themselves clearly want to project a different message.

Putin’s travel options are severely limited by an International Criminal Court warrant, yet he remains a welcome guest in Beijing and Delhi. At his joint appearance with Modi, he emphasized Russia’s role in supporting the growth of its partners: not only with discounted oil but also through cooperation in nuclear energy, a sector crucial to sustaining India’s expanding and increasingly digital economy.

Modi, ever attuned to domestic priorities, focused on economic outcomes. For him, economic strength is both policy and political strategy—and it continues to deliver at the ballot box.

But the real significance of the meeting lies deeper.

Russia’s repositioning

Russia’s pivot toward Asia is no longer a temporary response to Western sanctions. It marks a structural shift.

For centuries, Russia oriented itself toward Europe because Europe oriented much of the world toward itself. Yet Europe is now preoccupied with internal technological, social, and environmental challenges. In the meantime, a fundamental change in global order has accelerated with too little recognition.

In 1990, the G7 accounted for nearly 70% of the world economy. Today, it is closer to 40%. The numbers are well known; the implications remain underappreciated.

When European policymakers reduce a Modi–Putin meeting to a referendum on Ukraine, what they are really saying is: “Our priorities still define the global agenda.”

But for much of the world, they no longer do.

What Multipolarity Really Means

Debates on multipolarity often revolve around a single question: When will China surpass the U.S.? Perhaps it already has by some measures; surely it soon will. But this is not a simple handover from one hegemon to another.

India, notably, is the only top-ten power that refuses to align fully with either Washington or Beijing. And many emerging powers - Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia-have no desire to replace American dominance with Chinese dominance.

They want a different system altogether.

Their priorities are clear:

Growth. Energy. Security.

These are the pillars that deliver domestic prosperity and secure a meaningful place on the global stage.

Beyond the handshakes

Here are three takeaways that frame the meeting in a global—not Euro-Atlantic—context:

1. India acts on long-term strategic interests, not moral narratives.
2. Russia’s reorientation away from Europe is a permanent structural shift.
3. The Western-led hierarchy of global power is dissolving—not into chaos, but into competition.

A multipolar world is messier. It is less predictable. It is more transactional.

But it is also more representative of how the world truly operates in the 21st century.

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World Reframed is produced in London by Global South World, part of the Impactum Group. Its editors are Duncan Hooper and Ismail Akwei.

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