Next week, two dozen world leaders will gather in Russia for a BRICS summit, an alliance of emerging economies that the Kremlin hopes will counter Western dominance.
This summit will be the largest held in Russia since the onset of the Ukraine conflict and aims to demonstrate that Western efforts to isolate Moscow during the two-and-a-half-year offensive have been unsuccessful.
Among those expected to attend the event in Kazan from October 22 to 24 are UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Russia has announced that it is expecting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the upcoming BRICS summit.
Expanding the BRICS group, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has become a key focus of Russia’s foreign policy.
The agenda will cover important topics, including creating a BRICS-led payment system to compete with SWIFT, a financial network that Russian banks were banned from using in 2022, and addressing the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
The Kremlin is promoting this summit as a diplomatic success, aiming to demonstrate that it can build alliances that challenge Western dominance. The United States has expressed concern about Russia’s increasing diplomatic influence while the conflict in Ukraine continues.
This year, Russia has made progress in eastern Ukraine and strengthened its ties with China, Iran, and North Korea—countries that are seen as adversaries by Washington. Political analyst Konstantin Kalachev noted that by hosting the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia wants to show that it is not isolated and has allies.
In 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Putin over the illegal deportation of children from Ukraine, leading him to skip the previous summit in South Africa. This time, the Kremlin aims to present an “alternative to Western pressure” and highlight the reality of a multipolar world, which shifts power away from the West.
Putin has often accused the West of provoking Russia into the Ukraine conflict and denies that the military offensive is an imperialistic land grab. The Kremlin advocates for global governance based on international law, rather than rules set by individual countries like the United States.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov described BRICS as a model of multipolarity, bringing together nations from the Southern and Eastern hemispheres based on mutual respect and sovereignty. He added that BRICS is gradually working to create a more democratic and just global order.
Since its founding in 2009 with four members, BRICS has expanded to include several other emerging countries, including South Africa, Egypt, and Iran. Turkey, a NATO member with complicated relations with both Russia and the West, expressed its desire to join BRICS in September.
Ushakov confirmed that all BRICS countries will be represented by their leaders at the Kazan summit, except for Saudi Arabia, which will send its foreign minister instead. Kalachev noted that while the Kremlin hoped to see the Saudi Crown Prince, overall, things are going well for Russia.
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