Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shook hands and embraced on Friday ahead of last weekend’s Brics summit in New Delhi, prompting Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal to post on social media: “A bond that keeps growing stronger!”

Analysts said the meeting pointed to a deeper recalibration of defence ties, as Delhi and Moscow explored more joint production, technology transfer and export-focused defense development.

The situation has pushed both sides from a buyer-seller model towards joint production, technology transfer and localisation under a “Make in India” programme launched in 2014.

The export success of BrahMos spotlights this shift. Travelling at three times the speed of sound and launchable from land, sea, air or under the sea, BrahMos has carved out a niche in a region increasingly anxious about maritime security.

No contract for an advanced BrahMos variant emerged from the Putin-Modi meeting, but it raised “the political priority of the next generation BrahMos work that was already under way”, said Srinivaasan Balakrishnan, director of strategic engagements and partnerships at the Indic Researchers Forum.

“We are jointly producing the BrahMos missiles,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week. “It is time to think about improving those missiles, adding some additional characteristics, making them more competitive in the market and more effective.”

Balakrishnan said upgrade proposals included a lighter, smaller variant of BrahMos for India’s Tejas jets, a submarine-launched version and a hypersonic variant capable of travelling at five times the speed of sound.

“The next step should be to move from jointly producing an existing weapon to jointly developing the next generation of weapons,” he said. “If Moscow is genuinely prepared to deepen technology sharing, BrahMos could become the foundation for a much more ambitious Indian-Russian defence industrial partnership.”