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.

President Vladimir Putin will play host to Russia’s biggest gathering of world leaders since the invasion of Ukraine and use the BRICS summit to show the US and its allies that he’s no pariah.

Russia wants the BRICS summit to showcase the rising clout of the non-Western world, but Moscow's partners from China, India, Brazil and the Arab world are urging President Putin to find a way to end the war in Ukraine.