Russia’s BRICS summit: What’s on the agenda and why it matters to Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin is hosting the annual BRICS summit, which started on Tuesday, in Russia’s southwestern city Kazan.

The three-day conclave will be the largest gathering of world leaders in Russia in decades and will be held at a time when the Kremlin is locked in a war with Western-backed Ukraine.

So what is on the agenda, and why is the summit significant?

What is BRICS?

BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The group started in 2006, and Brazil, Russia, India and China convened for the first BRIC summit in 2009. South Africa joined a year later.

The aim of the alliance is to challenge the economic and political monopoly of the West. The group sets priorities and has discussions once every year during the BRICS summit, which members take turns hosting. The summit is the 16th held.

In 2023, BRICS extended invitations to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates after these countries applied for membership. Saudi Arabia has yet to formally join, but the others have.

An invitation was extended to Argentina at the same time, but the South American country turned it down after President Javier Milei, elected in December, campaigned on the promise that he would bolster ties with the West.

Who is attending the BRICS summit?

Two dozen world leaders attended the opening of the summit on Tuesday.

Leaders of BRICS member countries – including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa – are attending the summit.

UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed have also all landed in Kazan for the summit.

Leaders of several other countries that have shown an interest in deepening ties with BRICS are also participating, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva cancelled his trip to Russia after suffering a head injury in a fall at home on October 19. Foreign Affairs Minister Mauro Vieira will now represent the country at the summit.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is also expected to attend – and meet Putin. On Monday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticised Guterres, saying that while he did not accept an invitation to attend a Ukraine-backed peace summit in Switzerland in June, “he did, however, accept the invitation to Kazan from war criminal Putin. This is a wrong choice that does not advance the cause of peace. It only damages the UN’s reputation.”

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant against Putin, accusing him of the war crime of illegal deportation of children from Ukraine.

What is on the summit’s agenda?

The central theme that unites BRICS members is their disillusionment with Western-led institutions of global governance, especially when it comes to the economy.

The sanctions imposed on Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine have spooked many Global South nations worried that the West could weaponise tools of global finance against them.

“In the aftermath of the war in Gaza, Russia and China have more effectively harnessed this anti-Western sentiment, capitalising on frustrations over Western double standards as well as the use of sanctions and economic coercion by the West,” Asli Aydintasbas, a Turkish foreign policy expert, said in comments to the Brookings Institute, a Washington, DC, think tank. “It doesn’t mean that middle powers want to trade US dominance for Chinese, but it means they are open to aligning with Russia and China for a more fragmented and autonomous world.”

To that end, BRICS partners want to reduce their dependence on the United States dollar and the SWIFT system, an international messaging network for financial transactions that Russian banks were cut off from in 2022.

In 2023, Lula proposed a trading currency for BRICS members. But experts have cautioned that any such initiative might be riddled with challenges. In August, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar also expressed scepticism about how realistic a BRICS currency might be.

Instead, BRICS members are now working on using their national currencies more for bilateral trade to insulate them from currency fluctuations and cut their dependence on the dollar.

“China now has an alternative to the SWIFT payment system, though limited in use, and countries like Turkey and Brazil increasingly restructure their dollar reserves into gold,” Aydintasbas said. “Currency swaps for energy deals are also a popular idea – all suggesting a desire for greater financial independence from the West.” 

Why is the summit significant for Putin?

Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the country and its leader have grown isolated.

A month after the start of the invasion, Canada, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the US unveiled a slew of sanctions on Russian banks, oil refineries and military exports. There have been more sanctions on Russia and its allies since.

The ICC arrest warrant against Putin also means he can’t travel to countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute, a UN treaty that established the court, without risking arrest. In 2023, he skipped the BRICS summit in South Africa, which is a party to the treaty, amid pressure on Pretoria to detain the Russian leader if he were to attend.

Western leaders are also largely unwilling to join Putin in any multilateral setting. Putin skipped the G20 summit in India last year even though New Delhi is not a party to the Rome Statute.

Against that backdrop, “the Kazan summit has great symbolic and practical importance for the Putin regime,” Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University, said in comments to the Brookings Institute. “The summit will demonstrate that, far from being isolated, Russia has important partners like India, China and other major emerging powers.”

The expanded BRICS group now represents about 45 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of global gross domestic product.

What’s next for BRICS?

BRICS is continuing to expand.

Southeast Asian countries have recently expressed an interest in joining the alliance.

At the BRICS Dialogue with Developing Countries held in Russia on June 11, Thailand said it wanted to join.

On June 18, Malaysia expressed interest in being part of BRICS just before Chinese Premier Li Qiang visited the country.

NATO member Turkey also formally requested to join BRICS in September.

“That so many countries are willing to go to Russia, deemed a pariah state not so long ago for having violated international law by invading Ukraine, confirms a trend followed by an increasing number of countries in the world: They don’t want to have to choose between partners,” said Tara Varma, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute.