Three Russian planes give Noida airport its first foreign landing

"We're looking forward to the President and Prime Minister having another bilateral meeting during the visit. It is scheduled," Peskov said. The leaders would begin with the bilateral agenda, he added, describing trade and economic cooperation as "a very wide scope".

Peskov said the visit would give the two countries an opportunity to review the state of their relationship, and offered his wishes for India's hosting of the summit.

This is Putin's second visit to India in under a year. The two leaders held their annual bilateral summit in New Delhi in December 2025, and Modi renewed the BRICS invitation in person when they met at the SCO summit in Bishkek on 31 August.

An airport opening by cargo plane

The Russian aircraft that landed at Noida were transport planes, arriving with the delegations and equipment that precede a head of state.

For a new airport, it is a milestone with an unusual shape. A new international airport's first foreign arrival is normally a scheduled service with fare-paying passengers on it. This one was a summit logistics run — a reminder that the facility's capacity is being tested by an event rather than by a route.

The choice also makes practical sense. Delhi's own airport is operating under a traffic plan that has put more than 35 roads across the capital under control, and Indira Gandhi International is the single point most likely to congest. Diverting delegation freight to a second airport in the National Capital Region takes pressure off both the runway and the road.

Putin himself is expected to arrive on 11 September and, like China's Xi Jinping the following day, to land at the Air Force Station at Palam before moving to a hotel in Chanakyapuri. Both delegations are flying in some of their own vehicles and convoy cars, and officials expect Russia and China to run the largest motorcades of the summit.

Security around the Russian delegation

The arrangements around Putin's stay have been in place for several days. Russian security teams are already at the hotel where the president is expected to stay, carrying their own weapons and equipment, with personnel positioned from the floors he will occupy through to the rooftops and ground floors.

Delhi Police have assigned an additional deputy commissioner and two assistant commissioners to that hotel across separate shifts. Every member of hotel staff has been vetted, with checks run in Delhi and in employees' home states.

Putin will share the hotel with VIP dignitaries from Bangladesh. Xi and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko are booked into another; Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has one to himself.

Where the bilateral sits in the week

Friday is the day India has set aside for bilateral diplomacy before the multilateral business begins. Modi's meeting with Putin is one of two confirmed for that day; the other is with Pezeshkian. A Modi–Xi meeting is widely expected on Saturday, on the sidelines of the summit itself.

The sequencing matters. India goes into the BRICS sessions having spoken separately to Russia and to Iran — one a long-standing partner, the other a party to the war that is currently the main obstacle to a joint declaration. The eleven member countries' Sherpas are still negotiating the language on West Asia, and the last ministerial meeting in May ended without a joint statement.

For Moscow, it is a second leader-level meeting with Modi inside a year. For Delhi, it is diplomacy with a long-standing partner conducted while India also manages its relationships with the United States and the Gulf.

The three transport aircraft at Noida are a small detail in that, but a telling one. The apparatus of a state visit now needs a second airport, and the summit has not started yet.