Russian Officials Discuss the Agenda for the October BRICS Summit
July 9—Sergey Ryabkov, who is Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister and the country’s BRICS sherpa for the October 22-24 summit in Kazan, Russia, said that Russia’s BRICS presidency in 2024 “is focused on forming a new category of partner nations” of the BRICS, according to TASS. In an interview with the Russian Foreign Ministry’s International Affairs magazine, Ryabkov explained: “We should offer the category of partnership to all those who want closer ties with BRICS. Obviously, this is not a full-fledged membership and there can be various nuances and different visions, including within the BRICS association, of how partners should be invited for cooperation at various levels and on various matters.” These issues, he added, “are being looked at these days…. The work on a partner state category and a list of potential partner nations for expanded cooperation with BRICS are the priorities for Russia’s presidency.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had previously made the announcement that the “vast majority” of the current BRICS members had agreed that they should pause the admission of full new members for the moment. Ryabkov elaborated: "It would be a huge challenge for any organization to grow twofold in less than 15 years, wouldn’t it? We have ensured the twofold growth of BRICS members while continuing to work. And the results are impressive.” He explained that the challenge is to maintain a high level of cooperation among the member states as the group expands. “Just imagine that after admitting five new members from January 1, 2024, we immediately begin receiving these or those applicants for membership…. This is easy to imagine but next to impossible to achieve."
The second topic that Russia has stated as a priority for their 2024 presidency, is advancing on the issue of a new financial architecture to counter the weaponization of the dollar and facilitate global trade and development. This second topic is also under intense discussion in the lead-up to the October Kazan summit, with debate over how far to take the idea of creating a new currency.
Russia’s Ambassador to China Igor Morgulov on July 7 told a panel discussion on the prospects of BRICS at the Global Peace Forum at Tsinghua University that the United States is targeting nations “that do not agree with the use of the dollar as a weapon to achieve political goals…. [The West is] uncompromisingly trying to force the countries of the Global South to take its side.”
Morgulov further explained, in the words of a report on Sputnik Brasil’s Telegram channel, that “the BRICS are abandoning the space dominated by the dollar and are developing mechanisms and instruments of a truly independent financial system.” Sputnik then quoted Morgulov directly: “There are negotiations on a BRICS common currency. I don’t think that it’s a matter for the immediate future, but the trend is obvious. We are moving in that direction, that is clear to us. I believe that it will take some time, it’s not a short-term perspective.”