Vladimir Putin, ostracized by the West and listed as a possible war criminal by the International Criminal Court, has hosted 36 world leaders from nations including China, India and Iran at a BRICS summit designed to show that Moscow is anything but isolated.
One of the main objectives of the summit is to streamline the means to reduce the number of dollar transactions and thus mitigate the ability of the United States to use the threat of sanctions to try to impose its political will.
The Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres, attended the summit, as he did last year. His decision has angered many in the West and the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, as the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March 2023 for the kidnapping of children. The UN has said Guterres will repeat his view that the invasion of Ukraine violates the United Nations Charter.
This Wednesday, the group condemned the imposition of unilateral sanctions not supported by the United Nations and called for the lifting of existing ones. “Unilateral coercive measures, including unilateral economic sanctions and secondary sanctions, which contradict international law, have serious consequences for the exercise of human rights, including the right to development,” says the document released at the end of the meeting of the nine members.
On Ukraine, the Kazan statement says: “We emphasize that all States must act consistently with the Purposes and Principles of the Charter of the United Nations in their entirety and interrelationship. We note with appreciation the relevant proposals for mediation and good offices, aimed at a peaceful resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.”
About thirty leaders
Moscow says 36 countries are attending parts of the three-day meeting, making it the largest international gathering organized by Putin since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia chairs the group this year.
Chinese President Xi Jinping greeted Putin in Kazan as his dear friend, praising the “deep” friendship between the two countries. “The world is experiencing profound changes never seen in a century, and the international situation is chaotic and intertwined.” The ties between China and Russia have “injected strong impetus to the development, revitalization and modernization of the two countries,” said the Chinese leader.
Putin expressed his desire to strengthen ties with China to achieve greater global stability. “We intend to continue to enhance coordination across all multilateral platforms to ensure global security and a just world order,” he told Xi.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he wants the Ukrainian conflict to be resolved quickly and peacefully. Modi visited kyiv in August and Moscow in July in an effort to foster talks, presenting Delhi as a possible mediator, but there has been little progress since then. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has also sought 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.”
Putin, who spoke on Tuesday with Dilma Rousseff, president of the New Development Bank (NBD), known as the BRICS bank, said that the use of local currencies instead of the dollar or the euro “helps maintain free economic development.” of policy to the extent possible in the context of today’s world.
More members
Russia claims the group now represents the global majority that can form a substantial element of a coming new world order.
The BRICS has already moved from its five members – South Africa, Russia, China, Brazil and India – to a broader group that includes Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Iran. Argentina presented its candidacy and withdrew after its presidential elections, which the far-right Javier Milei won.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi praised Russian support for Egypt’s economic projects when he met with Putin. Chief among them, Sisi said, is Egypt’s first nuclear power plant at El-Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast, built by the Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom.
Among the new candidates, who are in various stages of applying for membership, are Türkiye and Saudi Arabia.
In addition to the hesitant Guterres, other attendees at the summit are the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and leaders of Algeria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Indonesia and Mexico.
“The BRICS can be a way out of American totalitarianism and create a path to multilateralism. They can be a solution to confront the dominance of the dollar and the economic sanctions of countries,” declared Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
But expanding the number of group members carries the risk of a loss of clear ideological cohesion.
India and Brazil partly share the desire to free themselves from the dominance of the dollar, but not to the same extent as China or Russia. Despite the anti-Western language in the summit communiqués, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for example, has insisted that the BRICS “are not against anyone.” Brazil opposes Venezuela being admitted to the group as part of an effort to prevent the alliance from becoming purely anti-Western.
The Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, arrived in the country without prior notice. Russian news agencies quoted him calling the group the “epicenter of the new multipolar world.” This Wednesday, Maduro met with the Russian president.
“A gift for Putin”
Alex Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, believes that, in general, the BRICS summit is already a gift for Putin. “Not only [Rusia] is far from being an international pariah, but is now a fundamental member of a dynamic group that will shape the future of the international order,” he says in an article published in Foreign Affairs. “This message is not a mere rhetorical posturing, nor a simple testimony to the Kremlin’s skillful diplomacy with non-Western countries or to those countries’ pragmatic and self-interested engagement 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 detain him because of the ICC arrest warrant, since South Africa is a signatory to the Rome Statute.
Perhaps the Russian president may be hoping more generally for world events to swing in his direction, with Donald Trump’s possible return to the White House following next month’s election and the possibility of a favorable election outcome. from Georgia this weekend.
The near-term future of the Ukraine war depends on Trump’s election, but even if he loses, war fatigue in Europe is leading all sides to the conclusion that Ukraine will have to at least engage in talks with Putin while Russian troops continue to occupy much of eastern Ukraine. Guterres’ decision to attend the summit has international consequences.
In 2014, Brazil, China, India and South Africa abstained from voting on a UN General Assembly resolution supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Their unity was diluted after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in which India, China and South Africa abstained, and Brazil condemned Russia’s actions.
But the founding purpose of BRICS+ is not security, but a means to develop economic and technological platforms immune to US pressure and sanctions, in part by circumventing the dollar and driving the internationalization of the yuan.
Although the combined GDP of the BRICS+ group is greater than that of the G7 or the EU, their share of capital and their consequent voting influence in institutions such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) remain significantly lower, since the voting power of each member country is weighted based on its financial contribution to the World Bank.
This article has been updated by the editorial staff of elDiario.es.
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