New Delhi, Republic of India / Bharat, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (Weltexpress). Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation (RF), is meeting with Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of the Republic of India (Bharat), in New Delhi. They will negotiate with their delegations on issues of war and peace, cooperation in space and in the military-industrial complex. Trade and change also play an important role in these two powerful states in Eurasia. However, experts and critics do not consider economic relations in general to be the most important issue, but rather currency relations and thus de-dollarisation.
Under the headline ‘Putin’s visit to India: What’s on the summit agenda?’, RT DE (4 December 2025) reports the following: “The two countries are interested in linking their national payment systems. Moscow hopes that the sides can reach an agreement on the mutual recognition of the Mir and RuPay systems. The next step is to link the Russian System for Speedy Payments (SBP) and India’s real-time payment system Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
Moscow and New Delhi have increased the use of the rouble and rupee for trade settlements, with 90 per cent being conducted in national currencies.”
The de-dollarisation of the global financial system is a trend that has been accelerating in recent years. In the years since 2015, the greenback has gone rapidly downhill. Experts and critics cite the turn of the millennium as the beginning of de-dollarisation. Since then, the dollar’s journey as a reserve currency and global reserve currency has been downhill. Under the headline ‘Crash of the greenback: the de-dollarisation of the world’, Stock3 (2 December 2025) reports: ‘The “Bloomberg Intelligence USD share of global foreign currency reserves (in %)” has fallen from over 60% around the year 2000 to just over 40% in 2025, a low point in modern financial history.’
It is stated that ‘the freezing of Russian dollar reserves … is acting as an accelerant’ and reference is made to the ‘internationalisation of the yuan (renminbi)’ of the People’s Republic of China. Putin and Modi know this. Will they continue to bet on the rouble and the rupee, or possibly on the renminbi?
