The sixteenth BRICS summit began this Tuesday in the Russian city of Kazan with a clear objective in the mind of its host, Vladimir Putin: to consolidate a platform that offers Moscow an economic and diplomatic alternative to the West. More than two dozen international leaders and 36 country delegations are on the list invited by the Kremlin to this Tatar city on the banks of the Volga. Among them is UN Secretary General António Guterres, who will meet face-to-face with Putin on Thursday for the first time since April 2022, at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The meeting of the head of the United Nations with the Russian autocrat, together with his refusal to participate in the Swiss peace summit – to which Moscow did not attend either – have outraged the Government of Volodymyr Zelensky.
One of the Kremlin’s priorities for the BRICS forum, which runs until Thursday, is to promote a financial system that allows Russia to avoid Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine. “We are developing relevant platforms within the framework of this partnership. (…) Financial systems, payment instruments and investment mechanisms. The economic growth of the BRICS members will depend less and less on external influences or interference,” the Russian president proclaimed in a meeting with businessmen from the bloc on the eve of the summit. “The GDP of the BRICS exceeds that of the G-7 (of which Moscow was a part until the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014) and continues to grow,” he boasted.
An intense agenda of meetings awaits Putin these three days. This Tuesday, the Russian leader receives almost all the leaders of the main members of the BRICS: the Chinese president, Xi Jinping; Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi; the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa; and the Egyptian leader, Abdel Fattá al Sisi, whose country joined the platform last year. The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, could not attend the forum after suffering a domestic accident. In addition, Putin plans to hold other bilateral meetings on Wednesday and Thursday with guests from countries that are not part of the group, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a Palestinian delegation.
At the planned meeting between Putin and Guterres on Thursday, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is expected to be omnipresent. This will be the second time that the Secretary General of the United Nations travels to Russia since the aggression began. On his previous official trip, two and a half years ago, Guterres refuted the pretexts with which the Russian president and his Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, justified that their “special military operation” could be protected by international law to, supposedly, protect to the population of the Ukrainian region of Donbas, in the east of the country.
“In accordance with the resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a violation of its territorial integrity and the Charter of the United Nations,” Guterres warned then. “I have a deep conviction that the sooner we end this war, the better it will be for the people of Ukraine, for the people of Russia and the world.”
However, the visit of the United Nations Secretary General to the BRICS summit has outraged kyiv. “He rejected Ukraine’s invitation to the first global peace summit in Switzerland, but accepted war criminal Putin’s invitation to Kazan. “This is a wrong choice that does not advance the cause of peace, it only damages the reputation of the UN,” declared the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry through the social network X (formerly Twitter).
In his daily press conference, Guterres’ spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, plans to note that “once again, the Secretary General will attend the BRICS Summit, which is being held this year in the Russian Federation.” There will be “a lot of speculation” about a possible meeting with Putin, but the president’s office has nothing to say about it for now, internal sources at the institution say. There are also ongoing talks about a possible visit by Guterres to Ukraine, according to those same sources.
Notorious resignations
The BRICS summit in Kazan is the first in which the new members: Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Iran participate. In addition, more than 20 countries have at some point shown interest in being part of the club, although several have already ruled out the idea. Among them, Argentina, at the end of last year, after the arrival of Javier Milei to the presidency. Also, this week, two states that the Kremlin considers its backyard: Armenia and Kazakhstan.
Armenia announced in the summer its departure from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Russia’s alternative to NATO. Instead, the resignation of Kazakhstan — one of Russia’s main partners in other economic and political clubs such as the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Eurasian Union — has been more painful for the Kremlin. In response, the Russian authorities have banned the import of a series of Kazakh vegetables under the weak pretext of guaranteeing their phytosanitary safety. “Kasim-Yomart Tokáyev gives priority to the UN as a universal and non-alternative organization, in which all current international problems can and should be discussed,” concluded the spokesman for the president of Kazakhstan.
Another “ugly” to the Kremlin has been that of the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic. The leader of the main Russian support in the heart of Europe has ruled out going to Kazan and, instead, will receive the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, this Wednesday in Belgrade.
A club with good intentions, but different interests
Also in China they raise doubts about the real relevance of this club of nations. The official media South China Morning Post published, at the gates of the Kazan summit, an analysis in which its author, Macau University of Science and Technology professor Jian Shixue, highlighted several problems facing the BRICS. “Can the BRICS speak with one voice? Even before its recent expansion, cooperation was stifled by a lack of agreement among its members on important issues. Now that it has more members, reaching a consensus could be even more difficult,” he warned.
“It is easier to talk about economic cooperation than to do it,” highlighted the Chinese newspaper, which does not consider the platform to be adequate to adopt common financial measures because its members either collaborate with the West – alluding to India, one of its biggest regional rivals – or are part of other platforms with other interests, such as Mercosur. Likewise, the expert highlighted the “enormous political courage” necessary to progress in the de-dollarization of the international economy.
Putin, who in 2022 wanted to promote a single currency among the BRICS, has given up on the idea. It now plans to launch an alternative banking payment system to SWIFT, from which it was expelled by the invasion of Ukraine. In reality, these mechanisms already exist, from cryptocurrencies to national payment systems. However, Moscow has found that Chinese banks have stopped collaborating to avoid problems with the United States, a country with which they have a greater volume of business.
“It is increasingly difficult to make payments and import parts from China,” an employee of a Russian gas company explains to this newspaper. “When a Chinese bank blocks payments, we look for another one, usually small regional entities, but it is increasingly complicated.”
BRICS Bridge
Moscow will insist its partners begin to widely use the BRICS Bridge payment system, as the Ministry of Finance has leaked to the Russian press. “The global financial system is obsolete and is not up to the current challenges: it is subordinated to the interests of developed countries,” declared the Department of Economy of the Eurasian country in a report published on the eve of the summit.
For the expert Maria Snegovayaof the think tank CSIS, the boycott of the international financial system is only a kick forward for the Kremlin after the damage caused by the offensive against Ukraine. “The same Russian elites who desperately tried to integrate themselves into these institutions for more than 20 years in a row are now trying to destroy them with their own hands. The complete inability to analyze one’s own actions borders on madness,” says Snegóvaya. on his Telegram channel.
