President Vladimir Putin, ostracized by the West and branded a potential war criminal by the International Criminal Court, has ordered China, It hosted world leaders from 36 countries, including India and Iran. isolated.
One of the summit's main objectives is to accelerate ways to reduce the number of dollar transactions and reduce the ability of the United States to use the threat of sanctions to impose its political will.
A spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General confirmed that António Guterres will attend the summit, as he did last year. His decision has outraged many Western countries, including Ukraine's Foreign Ministry, since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin's arrest in March 2023 over child abductions. The United Nations said Mr. Guterres reiterated his view that the invasion of Ukraine violated the United Nations Charter.
The Russian government said representatives from 36 countries attended part of the three-day conference, making it the largest international gathering since President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia is this year's chairman.
Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed President Putin as a dear friend in Kazan and praised the “profound” friendship between the two countries. “The world is experiencing profound changes not seen in the last 100 years, and the international situation is chaotic and intertwined,” he said.
China-Russia relations “have provided a strong impetus to the development, revitalization and modernization of both countries,” the Chinese leader said.
President Putin said he wants to strengthen relations with China to bring greater stability to the world. “We intend to further strengthen cooperation on all multilateral platforms to ensure global security and a fair world order,” he told Xi.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he hopes the Ukraine conflict will be resolved quickly and peacefully. Prime Minister Modi visited Kiev in August and Moscow in July to encourage talks, branding Delhi as a potential peace party, but little progress has been made since then.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is also trying to play the role of mediator in the conflict, praised Moscow as a “valuable ally and friend who supported us from the beginning in the fight against apartheid”.
President Putin met with Dilma Rousseff, head of the BRICS New Development Bank, on Tuesday and said that using local currencies instead of the dollar or euro “is a good idea in the context of today's world to keep economic development as far away from politics as possible.” It’s helpful.” .
Russia claims that this group now represents a global majority that can form a key element of the coming new world order.
The Brics Group has already expanded from five members – South Africa, Russia, China, Brazil and India – to a broader group including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Ethiopia and Iran. Argentina applied, but withdrew after the presidential election.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi praised Russia's support for Egypt's economic projects during a meeting with President Putin. Sisi said the most important of these was Egypt's first nuclear power plant in El Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast, built by Russia's state nuclear company Rosatom.
New applicants, known as hedge states, include Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and are at various stages of membership.
In addition to the shaken Guterres, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of Algeria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Indonesia and Mexico are also scheduled to attend.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on his way to a summit in Kazan. “BRICS can break away from American totalitarianism and pave the way for multilateralism. BRICS can be a solution to deal with the dominance of the dollar and deal with economic sanctions in countries.”
However, with the expansion of Brics membership comes the risk of losing clear ideological coherence.
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India and Brazil share some degree of desire to break free from the dollar's grip, but not to the same degree as China and Russia. Despite the anti-Western language used in the summit's communiqué, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, for example, insists that the BRICS are “not against anyone.” . Brazil has recommended that Venezuela not be admitted as part of efforts to prevent the alliance from becoming purely anti-Western.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro arrived unannounced. He called the group “the center of a new multipolar world,” Russian news agencies reported.
Overall, the BRICS summit was already a gift to Putin, said Alex Gabuyev, director of the Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Center in Berlin.
write in foreign affairshe said the message of the rally would be: [Russia] Far from being an international pariah, it is now a central member of a dynamic group shaping the future of the international order. That message is not just rhetoric, nor is it simply evidence of the Kremlin's deft diplomacy with non-Western countries or of their self-interested and pragmatic engagement with Russia. ”
President Putin was unable to attend the last BRICS summit in Johannesburg due to risks. Because South Africa is a signatory to the Rome Statute, it did not want to embarrass the organizers, who would have been obliged to arrest Putin under the ICC warrant.
The Russian president believes the world is tilting in his direction, including the possibility of Donald Trump returning to the White House next month and a favorable outcome in Georgia's elections this weekend. may be expected more generally.
The short-term future of the Ukraine conflict depends on Trump's election, but even if Trump loses, Europe's war-weary will likely leave Ukraine at least as vulnerable to President Putin while Russian troops are still in the majority. All parties have concluded that it is necessary to begin negotiations with the United States. of eastern Ukraine. Guterres' decision to attend the summit will have international implications.
In 2014, Brazil, China, India, and South Africa abstained from a UN General Assembly resolution supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity after Russia's annexation of Crimea. After Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, solidarity between the two countries faded as India, China and South Africa abstained and Brazil condemned Russia's actions.
However, the purpose of establishing Brics+ is not security, but rather a means to develop an economic and technological platform that is immune to US pressure and sanctions by circumventing the dollar and promoting the internationalization of the renminbi. .
Even though the Brics+ group's combined GDP is larger than either the G7 or the EU, its capital share and subsequent voting influence within institutions such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) remains significantly smaller. This is because the voting rights of each member state are valued. Fundamentals of Financial Contribution to the World Bank.
