The Brics summit in Delhi brought together leaders including China's Xi Jinping, Russia's Vladimir Putin, Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian and the UAE's Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in a gathering that highlighted both the group's expanding diplomatic reach and its deep internal contradictions. Many of these nations have histories of rivalry or conflict, including India-China border clashes and Iran-UAE tensions during the recent Middle East war, yet host India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sought to position the bloc's members as "rule-shapers" rather than "rule-takers" on the world stage.

The summit produced the "New Delhi Declaration", a joint statement that succeeded where two earlier Brics ministerial meetings this year had failed to reach consensus, but only by avoiding direct blame or naming specific countries. It called for "maximum restraint" over the Middle East conflict and condemned attacks on civilian and nuclear infrastructure without attributing responsibility, reaffirmed support for a two-state solution, and notably omitted any mention of Russia's war in Ukraine. On trade, it criticised "indiscriminate rising tariffs" and unilateral sanctions without naming the United States, reflecting members' reluctance to provoke President Donald Trump, who has previously branded some Brics proposals "anti-American". Analysts noted the declaration's careful, unspecific language bore the hallmark of India's balancing diplomacy, aimed at preserving strategic autonomy rather than casting Brics as an explicitly anti-Western bloc.