Russian President Putin officially opened the BRICS summit. According to him, the “multipolar world order” desired by the group is being formed. In addition to several heads of state, UN Secretary General Guterres also came.
The heads of state of the BRICS group met for their first meeting at the summit. Russian President and host Vladimir Putin spoke to participants about what he saw as an emerging “multipolar world order”.
“The process of forming a multipolar world order is underway, it is a dynamic and irreversible process,” Putin said at the official start of the meeting in Kazan, a city in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan. The BRICS strategy is in line with “the wishes of the largest part of the world community, the so-called global majority.”
A photo provided by Russia shows a meeting at the BRICS summit. You can see the heads of state of the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, China, Russia, India, Egypt, Iran and the foreign minister of Brazil.
Many interested applicants
More than 30 countries want to join the alliance, Putin said. “It would certainly be wrong to ignore the unprecedented interest of the countries of the South and East of the World in strengthening contacts with the BRICS,” the Kremlin chief said, but added: Expansion should not come at the expense of the effectiveness of the alliance. A total of 36 countries are participating in the three-day meeting in Kazan.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa also said that the BRICS group of emerging economies has an important role to play in shaping a new multipolar world order. The summit is an opportunity to create a fairer world.
Putin meets Guterres on Thursday
The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, also arrived this morning. According to Russian intelligence, Putin and Guterres will meet on Thursday. It would be the first meeting between the two since April 2022. In late February 2022, Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine. According to the UN, Guterres will meet a “large number” of high-level participants at the summit amid growing international concerns about conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Ukraine strongly condemned Guterres’ trip to the summit. Guterres declined Ukraine’s invitation to the peace summit in Switzerland, but accepted war criminal Putin’s invitation to Kazan. This was said to be wrong and damaged the reputation of the United Nations.
Xi, Modi and Ramaphosa are also there
Many heads of state from the BRICS countries came to the summit on Tuesday, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. According to the Kremlin, their heads of state will represent more than 20 countries.
The BRICS group was created to reduce Western dominance in world affairs. For more than a decade, there were five states in the bloc: in addition to Russia, there were Brazil, India, China and South Africa. The name also goes back to these members.
More recently, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates have joined – Saudi Arabia has been invited but has not yet formally joined. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have submitted a formal application for membership, and several other states have expressed their desire to join.