What started out in 2006 as a meeting place for a group of emerging economies is today an important forum for most of the Global South, providing a venue for countries that represent over 45 percent of the world population (and growing), along with some of the fastest growing economies, with about 25 percent of global GDP.
It allows its members to enhance their diplomatic influence on issues not represented on other fora.
The 16th BRICS Summit on “Strengthening Multilateralism for Equal Global Development and Security”, held in Kazan on October 22-24, draw more attention than ever before, quite a feat after the successful 15th summit a year ago, that was dominated by China’s surge and an unprecedented wave of invitations to new members. Among those, Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia joined the association on January 1, 2024.
With increased attention, alternative narratives also emerged in abundance.
If we stick to the facts, these are the takeaways: there were 20 leaders of various member states (including heavyweights like China’s Xi Jinping, Turkish president Erdogan or India’s prime minister Narenda Modi), along with 16 countries represented by lower-level delegates. Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva only missed the event due to a head injury, but has sent his Minister of Foreign Affairs Mauro Luiz Lecker Vieira instead.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was also attending. This was Guterres’s first visit to Moscow in two years, prompting Kyiv to quickly criticise him for his participation, especially as Guterres did not accept an invitation to attend the peace summit organized in Switzerland in June.
This makes the summit the largest event Russia has hosted in years.
The Kazan Declaration, issued at the end of the summit, highlighted the development of the group, emphasizing their deepening financial cooperation, and focusing on current world problems from Ukraine to the Middle East. It condemned both the Western Sanctions against Russia as “unlawful unilateral coercive measures” and the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and called for immediate cessation of military acts.
It also became clear that BRICS is ready to expand more – Turkey has formally requested to join BRICS in September, Thailand and Malaysia expressed interest in June. President Putin spoke about 30 countries had signalled their willingness to join – though it is unclear how certain these requests are or how the expansion would actually work.
According to one interpretation, the Summit was s proof of Putin’s “alternate reality” that allowed the Russian president to position himself as a respected and powerful leader. And though Putin sough “to expand Russia’s global clout” but the summit was, in fact, shadowed by Ukraine.
This narrative also points at the fundamental differences (even conflicts) amongst the various BRICS members that can slow down or even stop their “ever-deepening” cooperation and limits their ability to send a unified message.
But there are many, who point out that for the first time ever, the BRICS Summit became a more important and representative event globally than the G7 or the G20. Trade volumes among members are increasing, FDI opportunities are on the grow, so is the chance to expand economic relationships with new trading partners.
It shouldn’t be ignored, either, that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa chose to attend the BRICS Summit instead of the Commonwealth Summit organized by King Charles III and Prime Minister Keith Starmer – probably not surprisingly, given that South Africa’s trade with other BRICS counties has risen by on average 10 percent every year since 2017.
So did Naredna Modi, though his press office later announced that “the prime minister was also very focused on the Commonwealth”.
Their presence was a clear win for Moscow, proving that Putin is far from isolated on the world stage.
Another issue worth remembering is that it was in Kazan, that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met face-to-face for the first time after five years. The two nations have just announced that they had reached a deal to resolve a four-year military stand-off on their Himalayan frontier.
And though the issue of Ukraine did come up regularly, it was UN Secretary-General Guterres who called for “a just peace in Ukraine”, but within the same speech, he also urged an immediate end to the fighting in Gaza, Lebanon and Sudan and he emphasized BRICS’s role in developing a more equitable global finance system.
Thus, they actually managed to send a strong unified message.
While it is unlikely that the BRICS will come anywhere near to toppling the existing global order in the next few years, it is undeniable that they found common topics. And joined together under the umbrella of BRICS, they can advance their overlapping interests and voice their complaints. BRICS is their tool to reflect a shared belief that the Western-dominated international order is not only outdated given the recent shifts of economic power and technology, but is also stacked against their interest. And as membership comes with few obligations (especially so in comparison with NATO or EU membership), there are few “sticks” to counterweight the opportunities coming with it.
