China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi and other global leaders arrived Tuesday in the Russian city of Kazan for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies that the Kremlin hopes to turn into a rallying point for defying the Western liberal order.

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

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,