File Photo: BRICS leaders at the 2014 G20 Summit.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold bilateral talks this evening in the city of Ufa in the Ural mountains, ahead of the seventh summit of the BRICS emerging economies on Thursday.
Soon after his meeting with Mr Putin, PM Modi will head into bilateral talks Chinese premier Xi Jinping. Mr Putin and Mr Xi wil also hold talks.
Among the main items on the agenda will be the establishment of a BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - bank to finance infrastructure projects in member states and developing countries. Indian banker KV Kamath takes over as the first chairman of BRICS' New Development Bank.
"This will probably be one of the world's leading institutions, which will focus on infrastructure projects," Russia's economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev said.
Russia is hosting the BRICS meeting hoping it will show that it is not cut off, despite its standoff with the West over Ukraine.
Taking place at the same time in the provincial city about 1,100 kilometres from Moscow is a meeting of the regional security grouping, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which is made up of Russia, China and the ex-Soviet Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
India and Pakistan are expected to be inducted as members.
The high-profile gatherings come as Moscow is locked in an bitter standoff with the West over the Ukraine crisis that has seen Mr Putin given the cold shoulder by the EU and the United States.
The hosting of the BRICS summit "emphasised that Russia's isolation is non-existent as before, despite the claims of some politicians in the United States and the European Union," political analyst Alexei Mukhin who heads the pro-Kremlin Centre for Political Information, told Kommersant FM radio.
BRICS "augurs the formation of a new world, in which the West will not dominate," Fyodor Lukyanov, the Kremlin-linked chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, wrote in Rossiiskaya Gazeta state daily.
"Behind closed doors and at a working lunch, the leaders will discuss all the current problems on the international agenda including Ukraine, including Greece, and the terrorist threat from the Islamic State group," Yury Ushakov, Mr Putin's top foreign policy aide, told journalists ahead of the summit, quoted by RIA Novosti news agency.