President Vladimir Putin is playing host to Russia’s biggest gathering of world leaders since the invasion of Ukraine and using the BRICS summit to show the US and its allies that he’s no pariah.

Nearly three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine saw Moscow condemned by countries globally, leader Vladimir Putin is staging a summit with more than a dozen world leaders – in a pointed signal from the autocrat that far from being alone,

Touts gathering as diplomatic triumph to challenge Western “hegemony”; Modi praises “special and privileged strategic partnership” with Russia.