Russian President Vladimir Putin opened the extended Brics summit in Kazan on Friday by promoting a new international payment system that would diminish dependence on the U.S. dollar, which he branded as being politically misused. He said 95 percent of trade between his country and China is now made in rubles and yuan.
Despite all the rhetoric on de-dollarization, the joint declaration of the summit struck me as an overly optimistic report on developing an alternative payment infrastructure to rival SWIFT at least, as all its members sought to indeed bypass the latter. The call becomes even more urgent because of new concerns from Brics members like Brazil and India that the bloc leans too much towards pro-Chinese and anti-Western stances.
The summit featuring leaders from all nine countries of Brics, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, happens to be Putin’s most headline-grabbing international engagement since the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. UN Secretary-General António Guterres is notably missing from this list, whose attendance is already drawing ire, this time from Ukraine, for his meeting with a leader who is under an international arrest warrant.
The final summit communique will probably run the gamut of perspectives. The meeting is going to focus on a joint initiative between Brazil and China on peace efforts in Ukraine; however, it will use much harsher words to denounce the situation in Gaza with Israel. Furthermore, the new peace plan has been rejected by the Ukrainian president as being too lenient.
As talks come about the future of BRICS, there remains much debate over the group’s expansion. Brazil and India want the bloc not to turn into an overtly anti-Western club. They want a more open and broad-based dialogue over and above the space carved out by geostrategic divisions and certain development priorities. If Cuba, Turkey, and Nigeria are among those that join Brics, one would view it as even more reflective of greater interest in the platform. Experts caution that US dollar dominance in global finance is entrenched.
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