Russia's foreign minister sat at the BRICS foreign ministers' table at Bharat Mandapam on Thursday. Sergey Lavrov delivered his prepared remarks. He praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "one of the most energetic leaders the world has ever seen." [1] He spoke about Russian energy supplies to India and about cooperation under the UN, BRICS, and G20 architectures. The Russian Foreign Ministry's statement said "special attention is expected to be paid to the situation in the Middle East" in his bilateral with Jaishankar.

He said nothing public about Iran.

The paper's May 13 feature named Russia's silence on Iran since the May 13 deadline a "documented strategic position, not absence." Today is the second day. A second data point. Lavrov in Delhi without an Iran statement is the Russian-foreign-policy artifact the paper had asked the bilateral to produce. The bilateral happened. The artifact did not.

The Russian seat at BRICS is occupied. The Russian voice on Iran is not. Lavrov has a track record of using BRICS to project Russian relevance on Middle East questions; the Russian "special representative" was credited in May 3 reporting with backing India's BRICS leadership and trying to push consensus on the West Asia issue. [2] None of that was put on the record in Delhi on Thursday. The Trump-Xi readout the same morning included an Iran paragraph; Russia did not respond to it.

INSS analysis the paper has previously cited reads the prolonged standoff as serving Moscow — high oil prices, US bandwidth diverted from Ukraine, regional rivals weakened. [3] The silence is consistent with that reading. Two days of public non-statement, on two different stages — once before the summit, once on the day of the summit — produce a position by accumulation. The Kremlin had two diplomatic venues to take a position this week. It used neither.

-- KATYA VOLKOV, Moscow