As the only two multilateral organisations that are entirely non-western in membership, the SCO and BRICS have remained relevant since their inception. While their core agendas relate to specific security and economic issues, they have also been calling for and working towards a fair, democratic, and just multipolar world order. The achievement of these varied goals in the multilateral format necessitates a successful integration of organisational goals with the national interests of member states and their respective visions for the international system. This brief focuses on two key members of the SCO and BRICS—i.e., India and Russia—and explores how their respective foreign policies have evolved in the past decade and what it means for their cooperation in these multilateral formats.

For Russia, the annexation of Crimea in 2014 led to a new post-Cold War low in relations with the west and a heightened focus on the emerging contours of a new world order; its 2022 invasion of Ukraine strengthened this direction, tipping its foreign policy into an anti-western orientation. This made engagement with the East fundamental to Russia’s ambitions. Meanwhile, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with his landslide victory in 2014, sought to redefine India’s image at the global level but with clear elements of continuity in foreign policy. The evolving structural shifts have both brought global attention to India and raised its aspirations for a place in the international order, even as it confronts multiple domestic development challenges. While India has followed an overall multi-alignment approach, the past decade has seen a steady increase in relations with the United States against the backdrop of rising tensions with China, where a de-escalation agreement on the border was reached only in October 2024.

The past decade has also seen India and Russia ramp up their respective multilateral engagements to secure their interests at the regional and global levels. Cooperation in multilateral forums is also an important part of India-Russia bilateral engagement, highlighted regularly in their joint summit statements. As an emerging power, India views multilateralism pragmatically for the pursuit of its own interests, through the formation of “coalitions within the developing world” in negotiations with the developed world as well as through membership of regional groups, including ones with “informal institutions”. For India, varied multilateral engagement, besides allowing it to expand its influence, is also driven by economic development needs and the desire for a fair multipolar world. While dissatisfied with global governance structures, New Delhi is not currently seeking to alienate the west in the pursuit of a reform of existing multilateralism, instead using available institutions to further its national interests.

On the other hand, Russia has expressed dissatisfaction over its engagement with European or western-led multilateral institutions and blames the “crisis” of the “UN-centric system” on the United States (US)’s pursuit of rules-based order’. Experts argue that a combination of “anti-Americanism” and the practical consideration of securing its own interests has led Russia to focus more on regional multilateral frameworks, including in the post-Soviet space, to avoid the domination of the region by outside powers. Overall in Asia, Russia has been a pragmatic player in cooperating with multilateral institutions, where its economic limitations have led to it engaging with regional multilateral frameworks regardless of their effectiveness.

Both India’s and Russia’s approaches are driven less by principles and more by pragmatism. This allows them to build cooperation in the pursuit of goals such as rule-making and rule-shaping in an evolving world order, striving for reformed multilateralism, coordinating on shared concerns, managing a rising China, building a balanced foreign policy, and promoting their national goals. Over the years, these priorities have also transformed for both countries, thus impacting their cooperation at the multilateral level.

This paper can be accessed here.

This paper is authored by Nivedita Kapoor, ORF, New Delhi.