Vladimir Putin meets Narendra Modi in Kazan. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/Reuters
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, ostracised by the west and labeled a potential war criminal by the International criminal court, has played host to 36 world leaders from nations including China, India and Iran as part of a summit of the Brics group designed to display Moscow as anything but isolated.
It was unclear if the UN secretary general is willing to defy the west and Ukraine by attending the summit, as Moscow claims he intends. António Guterres’s spokesman was equivocal about his plans on Monday.
The ICC has issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest over the abduction of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Moscow said the representatives from 36 countries would attend parts of the three-day meeting, making it the largest international gathering hosted by Putin since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Putin will meet one-on-one with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, as well as holding 15 other bilateral meetings.
Russia claims the group represents the global majority that can make up a substantial element of a 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 including Egypt, United Arab Emirates. Ethiopia and Iran. Argentina applied and then withdrew after its Presidential elections.
New applicants, often known as hedging states, that are in various stages of seeking membership include Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Others due to attend the event, apart from the wavering Guterres, include the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, as well as leaders from Algeria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Indonesia and Mexico.
A key purpose of the group is to act as a counterweight to the main western economies, especially the dominance of the dollar, seen increasingly as a US weapon to impose its political will through sanctions. Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, said on the way to the summit in Kazan “Brics can be a way out of American totalitarianism and create a path of multilateralism. Brics can be a solution to deal with the dominance of the dollar and deal with the economic sanctions of countries.”
People welcome the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock
But with expansion of Brics membership comes the risk of a loss of clear ideological cohesion.
India and Brazil share some of the desire to be freed of the dollar’s dominance, but not to the same extent as China or Russia. Despite the anti-western language in summit communiques, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for instance has insisted that Brics is “not against anyone”.
Alex Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin, said overall the Brics summit is already a gift to Putin.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, he said the message of the gathering will be: “Not only is [Russia] far from being an international pariah but also is now a pivotal member of a dynamic group that will shape the future of the international order. That message is not mere rhetorical posturing, nor is it simply a testament to the Kremlin’s skilful diplomacy with non-western countries or to those countries’ self-interested, pragmatic engagement with Russia”.
Putin was unable to risk attending the last Brics summit in Johannesburg because he did not want to embarrass his hosts, who would have been obliged to arrest him on the ICC warrant since South Africa is a signatory to the Rome Statute.
Putin may be hoping more generally that world events are swinging in his direction, with the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House next month a and the possibility of favourable result in the elections in Georgia this weekend.
The future of the Ukraine conflict in the short term rests on Trump’s election, but even if he loses, a war fatigue in Europe is leading all sides to conclude that Ukraine will at least have to open talks with Putin while Russian troops still occupy a large part of eastern Ukraine. A decision by Guterres to attend the summit would 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 muffled after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, where India, China and South Africa abstained, and Brazil condemned Russia’s actions.
But the Brics+ founding purpose is not security but a means to develop economic and tech platforms that are immune to US pressure and sanctions, in part by circumventing the dollar and pushing the internationalisation of the yuan.
Despite Brics+ group having a larger combined GDP than either the G7 or the EU, its capital share and subsequent voting influence within institutions such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) remain significantly smaller, because each member country’s voting power is weighted on the basis of its financial contribution to the World Bank.