Russia’s Putin welcomes world leaders for three-day BRICS summit
Al Jazeera
President Putin hosts leaders including Xi and Modi at summit of bloc of developing economies.
China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi and other global leaders have arrived in the Russian city of Kazan for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies that the Kremlin hopes to turn into a rallying point for defying what some see as the Western liberal order.
For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the three-day meeting that got under way on Tuesday also offers a powerful way to demonstrate the failure of United States-led efforts to isolate Russia on the international stage over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov touted the summit as “the largest foreign policy event ever held” by Russia with 36 countries attending and more than 20 of them represented by heads of state.
BRICS – which initially comprised Brazil, Russia, India, China and later South Africa – has expanded rapidly to embrace Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have formally applied to become members, and a few other countries have expressed interest in joining.
