For Vladimir Putin, the optics could not be better.
More than two and a half years into his war in Ukraine, he is shaking hands this week with not just one world leader, or two, but more than 20.
China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian…there’s even Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of a NATO member state and EU candidate country.
They have all come to the Russian city of Kazan for the BRICS summit of emerging economies.
As you might expect, the Russian president was positively beaming as he sat down with various heads of state for a string of one-on-one meetings.
The message from the Kremlin is loud and clear – the West’s efforts to isolate Russia have not worked. Instead of losing friends, Moscow has made them.
Mr Putin and Mr Xi shake hands during their meeting on the sidelines of BRICS Summit. Pic: AP
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“It shows something about the weakness of the sanctions regime,” Mark Galeotti, principal director of Mayak Intelligence, told Sky News.
“There was a lot of exaggerated sense as to how the West could put a stranglehold on Russia, and many countries are, frankly, not willing to play those games.
“It highlights the degree to which in this incredibly complex, multi-connected, modern world, it’s very hard to actually isolate any country, especially one as large and as engaged in global commerce as Russia.”
Mr Putin embraces Narendra Modi during their meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan. Pic: Reuters
The first BRIC summit was in 2009, involving Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa joined in 2010 to add the S on the end of the acronym.
For much of the last decade and a half, the group has been dismissed by economists as an alphabet soup of countries – too spread out and fundamentally different from one another to form any meaningful alliance.
But in the last few years, it has grown more significant and seemingly influential.
‘A powerful platform’
The group has expanded its membership to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia has also been invited to join, and according to Russia, there are dozens of other countries that want to become part of the club.
That’s despite Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the West’s attempts to cast Mr Putin as a war criminal.
“A lot of countries in the Global South are really tone deaf to rhetoric about Russia breaking the rules,” Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told Sky News.
“All the questions ‘what about Iraq?’ are not driven by Russian propaganda points but by genuine concern about the US abusing its role as the most powerful country.
“They realise that the current international order underwritten by the US doesn’t really deliver for them and they don’t know what the alternative is but BRICS is really a powerful platform where these issues can be discussed.”
Top of the agenda this week is an alternative platform for international payments, which Mr Putin hopes will end the dominance of the dollar and make the BRICS economies immune to Western sanctions.
Because despite all the talk of sanctions not having the desired effect, they have caused Russia problems.
It’s been cut off from international markets, and more recently, the country’s had difficulties with cross-border trade, even with friendly countries like China, because it’s linked to the dollar and there’s a threat of secondary sanctions by the US.
An entirely new system, not involving the dollar, would bypass those issues. But it’s unlikely to come to fruition this week.
For one, the idea is still in its infancy. What’s more, not all the BRICS members, like India and Brazil, share Mr Putin’s anti-Western sentiment.
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“There is concern among these countries about how close you want to move towards Russia or an agenda that’s seen as enabling this horrible war from Russia in Ukraine,” Mr Gabuev said.
Brazil and India are not alone. Saudi Arabia and Turkey also share strong ties with the West. Their presence in Kazan can be seen more as an attempt to play both sides, rather than overt support of Russia.
But that does not seem to matter to the residents of Kazan. Most people we have spoken to here view the summit as the Kremlin intends.
“This is a wonderful event,” Alexandra told us. “I think that this will be a breakthrough and that the world has become multipolar.”
Alexei is another who is proud of his president.
“He is looking in all directions and it’s bearing fruit,” he said. “If someone thinks we’re isolated, it is probably only their problem.”
Not everyone shares that opinion, though.
Favaris points to Russia’s closer ties with North Korea: “If you are friends with an outcast, then you have fallen lower than ever.”
World
Iran says ‘indirect talks’ have taken place with US over nuclear programme – with more to follow
Iran says “indirect talks” over the country’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme have taken place with US officials, with more to come next week.
The discussions on Saturday took place in Muscat, Oman, with the host nation’s officials mediating between representatives of Iran and the US, who were seated in separate rooms, according to Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry.
After the talks concluded, Oman and Iranian officials reported that Iran and the US had had agreed to hold more negotiations next week.
Oman’s foreign minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi tweeted after the meeting, thanking Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff for joining the negotiations aimed at “global peace, security and stability”.
“We will continue to work together and put further efforts to assist in arriving at this goal,” he added.
(L-R) Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi meets his Omani counterpart Sayyid Badr Albusaidi. Pic: Iranian foreign ministry/AP
Iranian state media claimed the US and Iranian officials “briefly spoke in the presence of the Omani foreign minister” at the end of the talks – a claim Mr Araghchi echoed in a statement on Telegram.
He added the talks took place in a “constructive atmosphere based on mutual respect” and that they would continue next week.
American officials did not immediately acknowledge the reports from Iran.
Mr Araghchi said before the meeting on Saturday there was a “chance for initial understanding on further negotiations if the other party [US] enters the talks with an equal stance”.
He told Iran’s state TV: “Our intention is to reach a fair and honourable agreement – from an equal footing.
“And if the other side has also entered from the same position, God willing, there will be a chance for an initial agreement that can lead to a path of negotiations.”
Reuters news agency said an Omani source told it the talks were focused on de-escalating regional tensions, prisoner exchanges and limited agreements to ease sanctions in exchange for controlling Iran’s nuclear programme.
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Trump on Monday: ‘We’re in direct talks with Iran’
President Donald Trump has insisted Tehran cannot get nuclear weapons.
He said on Monday that the talks would be direct, but Tehran officials insisted it would be conducted through an intermediary.
Mr Trump also warned Iran would be in “great danger” if negotiations fail.
“Hopefully those talks will be successful, it would be in Iran’s best interests if they are successful,” he said. “We hope that’s going to happen.”
He added Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon, and if the talks aren’t successful, I actually think it will be a very bad day for Iran”.
The comments came after Mr Trump’s previous warnings of possible military action against Iran if there is no deal over its nuclear programme.
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Saturday’s meeting marked the first between the countries since Mr Trump’s second term in the White House began.
During his first term, he withdrew the US from a deal between Iran and world powers designed to curb Iran’s nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief.
He also reimposed US sanctions.
Iran has since far surpassed that deal’s limits on uranium enrichment.
Tehran insists its nuclear programme is wholly for civilian energy purposes but Western powers accuse it of having a clandestine agenda.
Mr Witkoff came from talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Friday, as the US tries to broker an end to the war in Ukraine.
World
President Duda says Trump best chance for Ukraine peace – and urges allies to stay calm over tariffs ‘shock therapy’
Poland’s outgoing President Andrzej Duda has kept few revelations for the final weeks of his presidency.
Ten years in office – a tenure spanning Donald Trump’s first and current term – his admiration for the incumbent leader of the free world remains undimmed. As is his conviction that Ukraine’s only chance of peace lies with the US leader.
In an interview with Sky News in the presidential palace in Warsaw, President Duda described Mr Trump‘s tariff policy as “shock therapy”, a negotiating tactic from a man “of huge business and commercial success” that he now brings to the arena of politics.
That may not be what European politicians are used to, Mr Duda says, but Donald Trump is answerable to the US taxpayer and not to his European counterparts, and allies must “stay calm” in the face of this new transatlantic modus operandi.
As for negotiations with Vladimir Putin, President Duda is sure that Donald Trump has the measure of the Russian leader, while refusing to be drawn on the competencies of his chief negotiator Steve Witkoff who landed on Friday in Moscow for further talks with Vladimir Putin – a man Mr Witkoff has described as “trustworthy” and “not a bad guy”.
Putting the kybosh on Nord Stream 2 in his first term and thwarting President Putin’s energy ambitions via his state-owned energy giant Gazprom are evidence enough that Mr Trump knows where to hit so it hurts, Mr Duda says.
Given the failures of Europe’s leaders to negotiate peace through the Minsk accords, he believes the onus now falls on Donald Trump.
“If anyone is able to force the end of Russia’s war, it is most likely only the President of the United States,” he says.
“The question is whether he will be determined enough to do that in a way – because it is also very important here in Europe being a neighbour of Russian aggression against Ukraine – that the peace is fair and lasting.”
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The Polish NATO base on the frontline with Russia
President Duda has just weeks left in office before the country votes for a new president in May.
Originally from Poland’s conservative Law and Justice party, one of the few points of alignment with the liberal and euro-centric prime minister Donald Tusk is the emphasis both place on security.
Hopes for ‘Fort Trump’ base
So did the announcement this week that the US would be withdrawing from the Jasionka air base near Rzeszow, which is the key logistics hub for allied support into Ukraine, come as a shock to the president, as it did to many Poles?
Not at all, Mr Duda says.
“We were warned that the change was planned. I have not received any information from [the US] about decreasing the number of American soldiers. Quite the opposite.”
US defence secretary Hegseth and President Duda met in February. Pic: Reuters
He referred back to talks with US defence secretary Pete Hegseth in February, saying: “We discussed strengthening the American presence in Poland, and I mentioned the idea of creating a huge base of US troops. Then, we called it Fort Trump. I do still hope that this idea will be implemented.”
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Andrzej Duda has staked his legacy on close ties with Donald Trump at a time when many NATO allies are considering a form of de-Americanisation, as they consider new trading realities and build up their own defence capabilities.
Poland has proven itself a model in terms of defence spending, investing more than any other NATO member – a massive 4.7% of GDP for 2025. But as the case of Canada shows, even the best of friendships can turn sour.
The Canadian conservative party, once dubbed a maple MAGA, was flying high in the polls before Donald Trump decided to savage links with his closest trading partner.
Now in the space of just a few months they are floundering behind the ruling liberal party. Is this a cautionary tale for Poland’s conservative Law and Justice party?
“For Canadian conservatives it is a kind of side effect of President Trump’s very tough economic policy,” Mr Duda says.
“In Poland, this does not have such an impact. The security issues are the most important. That’s the most important issue in Poland.”
World
Athens: Bomb explodes outside Hellenic Train’s offices amid anger over Greece’s worst train disaster
Police in Greece are investigating after a bomb exploded outside the offices of the country’s main railway company.
There were no reports of injuries after the blast next to Hellenic Train’s offices in central Athens on Friday evening.
An anonymous phone warning was reportedly made to a newspaper and a news website, saying a bomb had been left outside the railway company offices and would go off within about 40 minutes.
Police forensics experts wearing white coveralls were pictured collecting evidence at the scene following the blast on Syngrou Avenue, a major road in the Greek capital.
A police officer at the scene. Pic: Reuters
The bomb caused limited damage but no injuries to Hellenic Trains’ offices. Pic: AP
The male caller gave a timeframe of 35 to 40 minutes and insisted it was not a joke, local media outlet efsyn said.
Police cordoned off the site, keeping people away from the building in an area with several bars and restaurants.
A bag, described in local media as a rucksack, containing an explosive device had been placed near the Hellenic Train building.
The explosion comes amid widespread public anger over the Tempe railway disaster in which 57 people, mostly university students, were killed in northern Greece.
The government has been widely criticised for its handling of the aftermath of the country’s deadliest rail disaster when a freight train and a passenger train heading in opposite directions were accidentally put on the same track on 28 February 2023.
Unhappiness has grown over the last few weeks in the wake of the second anniversary of the tragedy.
Pic: Reuters
A worker cleans the area after the bomb. Pic: AP
Safety deficiencies exposed
The crash, which exposed severe deficiencies in Greece’s railway system, including in safety systems, has triggered mass protests, led by the relatives of those killed, which have targeted the country’s conservative government.
Critics accuse authorities of failing to take political responsibility for the disaster or hold senior officials accountable.
So far, only rail officials have been charged with any crimes. Several protests in recent weeks have turned violent, with demonstrators clashing with police.
Heated debate in parliament
Earlier on Friday, a heated debate on the accident in the Greek parliament saw a former cabinet minister referred to investigators for alleged failures in his handling of the immediate aftermath of the crash.
Hellenic Train said it “unreservedly condemns every form of violence and tension which are triggering a climate of toxicity that is undermining all progress”.
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Greece has a long history of politically motivated violence, with domestic extremist groups carrying out small-scale bombings which usually cause damage but rarely lead to injuries.
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