Russian President Putin hosts expanded BRICS summit

 

"This is an association of states that work together based on common values, a common vision of development and, most importantly, the principle of taking into account each other's interests," -Putin

KAZAN, Russia, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Russia wants the BRICS summit to showcase the rising clout of the non-Western world, but Moscow's partners from China, India, Brazil and the Arab world are urging President Vladimir Putin to find a way to end the war in Ukraine.

The BRICS group now accounts for 45% of the world's population and 35% of its economy, based on purchasing power parity, though China accounts for over half of its economic might.

Putin, who is cast by the West as a war criminal, told reporters from BRICS nations that "BRICS does not put itself into opposition to anyone", and that the shift in the drivers of global growth was simply a fact.

"This is an association of states that work together based on common values, a common vision of development and, most importantly, the principle of taking into account each other's interests," he said

The BRICS summit takes place as global finance chiefs gather in Washington amid war in the Middle East as well as Ukraine, a flagging Chinese economy and worries that the U.S. presidential election could ignite new trade battles.

Putin, who ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, was peppered with questions by BRICS reporters about the prospects for a ceasefire in Ukraine.

BRICS' share of global GDP is forecast to rise to 37% by the end of this decade while the share accounted for by the Group of Seven major Western economies will decline to about 28% from 30% this year, according to data from the International Monetary Fund.

PUTIN SAYS HE WILL NOT GIVE UP SEIZED PARTS OF UKRAINE

Putin's answer was, in short, that Moscow would not trade away the four regions of eastern Ukraine that it says are now part of Russia, even though parts of them remain outside its control, and that it wanted its long-term security interests taken into account in Europe.

Two Russian sources said that, while there was increasing talk in Moscow of a possible ceasefire agreement, there was nothing concrete yet - and that the world was awaiting the result of the Nov. 5 presidential election in the United States.

Russia, which is advancing, controls about one fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea which it seized and unilaterally annexed in 2014, about 80% of the Donbas - a coal-and-steel zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions - and over 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Putin said the West had now realised that Russia would be victorious, but that he was open to talks based on draft ceasefire agreements reached in Istanbul in April 2022.

On the eve of the BRICS summit, Putin met with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for informal talks that went on until midnight at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow. 

XI AND MODI ATTENDING SUMMIT, ILLNESS KEEPS LULA AWAY

Putin has praised both Sheikh Mohammed and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who will not attend the summit in Kazan, for their mediation efforts over Ukraine.

"I assure you that we will continue to work in this direction," Sheikh Mohammed told Putin. "We are ready to make any efforts to resolve crises and in the interests of peace, in the interests of both sides."

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend, though Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva cancelled his trip following medical advice to temporarily avoid long-haul flights after a head injury at home that caused a minor brain hemorrhage.

The acronym BRIC was coined in 2001 by then-Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill in a research paper that underlined the massive growth potential of Brazil, Russia, India and China this century.

Russia, India and China began to meet more formally, eventually adding Brazil, then South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia has yet to formally join.

BRICS' share of global GDP is forecast to rise to 37% by the end of this decade while the share accounted for by the Group of Seven major Western economies will decline to about 28% from 30% this year, according to data from the International Monetary Fund.

Russia is seeking to convince BRICS countries to build an alternative platform for international payments that would be immune to Western sanctions.

But divisions abound inside BRICS. China and India, the top purchasers of Russian oil, have difficult relations, while there is little love lost between Arab nations and Iran.

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Hosting BRICS Summit of World Leaders, Russia Shows West That It’s Not Isolated

By Henry Meyer, S'thembile Cele and Simone Iglesias / Bloomberg

October 22, 2024 The TIME

President Vladimir Putin will play host to Russia’s biggest gathering of world leaders since the invasion of Ukraine and use the BRICS summit to show the U.S. and its allies that he’s no pariah.

With Russian troops advancing in eastern Ukraine and evidence of growing war fatigue among some of Kyiv’s allies, the Kremlin is seizing its opportunity to cast Putin as standing up to the West in attempting to reshape the global order. The U.S. and its Group of Seven partners dismiss the argument, though it’s a message that resonates with some countries of the emerging world.

Leaders of 32 countries, as well as top officials of regional organizations and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, will attend the three-day summit starting Tuesday in Kazan, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa are due to join Putin alongside leaders of the new BRICS members, Iran, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia. Putin plans bilateral meetings with many of them, as well as with guests such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday canceled his plans to attend the summit after suffering a head injury in an accident at his home. Officials said he’ll participate by video link.

Even as the grouping attracts growing interest as a political and economic counterweight to the West, tensions are simmering over its direction and influence. Members are split over efforts to reduce reliance on the dollar as a global reserve currency, and on the wisdom of continued expansion of the group.

While BRICS favors greater use of national currencies in bilateral trade, members including India reject attempts to promote China’s yuan as an alternative reserve currency.

Russia has produced a summit report outlining possible changes to cross-border payments among BRICS countries aimed at circumventing the global financial system, though it acknowledges the proposals are mainly to promote discussion. They include developing a network of commercial lenders to conduct transactions in local currencies as well as establishing direct links between central banks.

Still, other BRICS states don’t have the same incentives to escape the dollar-based system as Russia, whose economy is straining under sweeping sanctions imposed over Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. 

Russia wants to push for a de-dollarized payment system at the summit, which China regards as too ambitious, said Wang Yiwei, director of Renmin University’s Center for European Studies in Beijing. 

The meeting is the first since BRICS agreed to extend membership to six additional nations at last year’s summit in South Africa. But Argentina pulled out under its new President Javier Milei and Saudi Arabia has remained non-committal.

Nations ranging from Malaysia and Thailand to Nicaragua and NATO-member Turkey are eager to join BRICS, though there’s unlikely to be an agreement on enlargement at the Russia summit. 

India is against further expansion for now and supports a category of “BRICS partner countries” without voting rights because it wants to steer the group away from becoming an anti-U.S. body dominated by China and Russia, Indian officials said on condition of anonymity because the issue is sensitive.

Brazil and South Africa support India’s view, said officials in the two countries. Any bid to dilute South Africa’s influence by inviting Nigeria or Morocco into BRICS will be resisted, said the South African officials.

The UAE completely rejects any attempt to present BRICS membership as a sign that the Global South is in opposition to the West, according to a person familiar with the matter, asking not to be identified discussing internal policy. The Gulf state has very good relations with countries in the West including the U.S., according to another official.

BRICS “expansion is a clear sign that the global balance of power is shifting,” said Alicia Garcia-Herrero, a Hong-Kong based economist who’s a senior research fellow at the Bruegel think tank. “But the future of the grouping is uncertain, given its heavy economic dependence on China and the deteriorating sentiment toward China among its members.”

Jim O’Neill, the Goldman Sachs economist who first coined the BRIC acronym in 2001, said expansion had made the group “highly political.” He told a forum in London in November: “I am not sure what fruitful purpose it serves other than being a club that the U.S. is not a part of.”

BRICS’ clout is growing. Its nine members account for 26% of the world economy and 45% of the world’s population versus the G-7’s 44% of global gross domestic product and 10% of its inhabitants. Brazil will host next month’s G-20 summit, following India’s presidency last year and ahead of South Africa’s in 2025.

Putin stayed away from last year’s BRICS summit after South Africa warned it would have to comply with an arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes in Ukraine issued by the International Criminal Court in March last year.

While the warrant has limited Putin’s travels, the gathering of so many foreign leaders in Russia underscores the readiness of many, particularly from Global South states, to continue meeting him in defiance of the U.S. and its allies.

The fact so many countries want to join BRICS indicates growing demand for international ties independent of the West, said Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a think tank that advises the Kremlin. 

“For now, everyone just wants to see what it can gain from this,” he said⍐.