Russian President Vladimir Putin, shunned by the West and branded a war criminal by the International Criminal Court, hosted 36 world leaders from countries including China, India and Iran as part of a BRICS summit designed to make Moscow appear isolated.
It is unclear whether the UN secretary general is willing to defy the West by attending the Ukraine summit, something Moscow says it wants. A spokesperson for Antonio Guterres sounded skeptical about his plans on Monday.
Russia has issued an arrest warrant for Putin for the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.
Moscow said representatives from 36 countries would attend the three-day meeting, the largest international gathering since Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they hold 15 bilateral meetings.
Russia claims the group represents a global majority that could form substantial elements of the coming new global order.
The BRICS group has already expanded from its five members (South Africa, Russia, China, Brazil and India) to a broader group that includes Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Ethiopia and Iran. Argentina applied and withdrew after its presidential election.
Among the new applicants, often called covering states, that are in various stages of seeking membership are Türkiye and Saudi Arabia.
In addition to the embattled Guterres, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of Algeria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Indonesia and Mexico are expected to attend the event.
The group's main goal is to act as a counterweight to major Western economies, particularly the dominance of the dollar, which is increasingly seen as a US weapon to impose its political will through sanctions. On the way to the Kazan summit, Iranian President Massoud Beseshkian said: “The BRICS can be a way out of the American dictatorship and create a multilateral path. “The BRICS will be a solution to confront the dominance of the dollar and the economic sanctions of the countries,” he said.
But BRICS members risk losing clear ideological unity with expansion.
India and Brazil share a certain desire to break the dominance of the dollar, but not to the same extent as China or Russia. Despite the anti-Western language in the summit statements, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for example, has insisted that the BRICS “are not against anyone.”
Alex Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said the BRICS general summit was already a gift for Putin.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, he reported on the meeting: “Not only that [Russia] Far from being an international pariah, he is now a key member of a dynamic group that is shaping the future of the international order. This news is not just a rhetorical gesture, nor proof of the Kremlin's effective diplomacy with non-Western countries, or of the pragmatic and interested commitment of those countries with Russia.
Putin could not risk attending the latest BRICS summit in Johannesburg because he did not want to embarrass his hosts, who would have been forced to arrest him with an ICC warrant because South Africa is a signatory to the Rome Statute.
Overall, Putin believes world events are turning in his direction: Donald Trump is likely to return to the White House next month and there will be a favorable outcome in the Georgia election this weekend.
The future of the Ukraine conflict in the short term depends on Trump's election, but even if he loses, a war-weary Europe is leading all sides to conclude that Ukraine should at least hold talks with Putin, as Russian troops They continue to occupy much of the east. Ukraine. Guterres' decision to attend the summit will have international consequences.
In 2014, Brazil, China, India and South Africa abstained from voting on a UN General Assembly resolution in support of Ukraine's territorial integrity following Russia's annexation of Crimea. Their unity was frozen after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, where India, China and South Africa abstained and Brazil condemned Russia's actions.
But the founding purpose of BRICS+ was not security, but rather a means to build economic and technological platforms resistant to US pressure and sanctions, in part to avoid the dollar and boost the internationalization of the yuan.
Although the Brics+ group has a larger combined GDP than the G7 or the EU, its social capital and voting influence within institutions such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) is significantly lower, as the voting power of each member state is weighted. basis of its financial contribution to the World Bank.
