Russian President Vladimir Putin greets South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during a welcoming ceremony for participants of the BRICS summit in Kazan on October 22, 2024. (Photo by MAXIM SHIPENKOV / POOL / AFP)
Text messages from Kazan, Russia, this week predictably alluded to tight security and choreography at the first Brics summit since the bloc welcomed four new members.
The arrival of South African delegates was delayed because the airport was briefly closed after a drone attack warning, while the summit was stage-managed to cast President Vladimir Putin as a global statesman whose power has not waned despite sanctions and an international arrest warrant over the war in Ukraine.
Putin on Wednesday said up to 30 nations have expressed interest in joining the bloc, which now counts nine members after Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) joined earlier this year. This is an overstatement of the popularity of the club, which increasingly serves as his answer to Western isolation over the invasion of Ukraine.
Rapid further Brics expansion is not realistic — South Africa and Brazil will not support it — and the shadow the war has cast over the first major summit on Russian soil since it began could not be conjured away.
The European Union on Wednesday called for Brics to use the opportunity to urge Putin to “immediately end the war on the Ukrainian people”, shortly before United Nations secretary general António Guterres arrived in Kazan for security talks with the Russian head of state.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping all raised the conflict in Ukraine ahead of the leaders’ session on Wednesday, but sources said every approach on the subject was met with silence.
Modi, after greeting Putin on arrival in Kazan, told reporters: “We have been in constant touch over the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“We believe that disputes should only be resolved peacefully. We totally support efforts to quickly restore peace and stability.”
Putin said nothing.
Like Modi, who visited Ukraine two months ago, Ramaphosa has cast himself as one of few world leaders who could be an honest broker in peace talks. He held a one-on-one meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the summit on Tuesday.
In published remarks Ramaphosa, at pains since the invasion of Ukraine not to alienate Putin, gave reassurances that South Africa’s historic friendship with Russia remained intact.
“We continue to see Russia as a valued ally, as a valued friend, who supported us right from the beginning: from the days of our struggle against apartheid, right through to now.”
Ramaphosa had hoped to extract a commitment from Putin to meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for the first time since he sent tanks into Ukraine in 2022, but it is understood that the conversation did not get that far.
Officially, the South African presidency said that there was agreement “on the urgent need to resolve the conflict with Ukraine peacefully”.
For his part, Putin said Russia’s relationship with South Africa was a strategic, equal partnership and stressed that Russia attached particular importance to expanding ties with the African continent.
After an earlier bilateral meeting with Xi, Putin called him a dear friend and cooperation between China and Russia “one of the main stabilising factors in the world”.
Xi concurred that the friendship would endure in a world in flux, and added a call for a de-escalation in the conflict in Ukraine.
The formal summit declaration released on Wednesday spoke to several conflicts around the world. It called for a ceasefire and respect for international law in Gaza and expressed “alarm over the situation in southern Lebanon”.
On Ukraine, the text stressed that all nations should act in line with the UN Charter and added: “We note with appreciation relevant proposals of mediation and good offices, aimed at a peaceful resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.”
It then went on to recall, in paragraph 23, the UN General Assembly’s annual resolution to combat “the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism” and other forms of racism and xenophobia.
It was Putin’s revenge, a delegate said, because though members could but only agree with the principle the reference was plainly inserted as a reminder of his claim that Ukraine is a “neo-Nazi regime”.
A South African official said the common perception that Russia, China and, of late, Iran were intent on using the bloc as an axis to challenge US dominance was a misreading that chose to interpret the forum’s raison d’etre in light of global shifts that happened long after it was formed, initially to optimise investment opportunities.
“Besides, Brics is simply too diverse, and this characterisation fails to take into account the tension between members. Not only the deep long-standing tension between China and India but the strife within Latin America, for example around Venezuela,” the source said.
“And it completely ignores the fact that India and the UAE are very comfortable having close ties with the US and will strive to maintain those. So it can never be that. Brics is not anti-Western, and perhaps those who chose to define it as such do so because they insist on seeing the world through the prism of the West.”
For South Africa, Brazil and India, membership is not a matter of belonging to a camp in a battle for dominance but rather of arguing collectively for reform of multilateral institutions to allow the Global South more leverage.
It is a point Ramaphosa has argued consistently in the run-up to South Africa’s presidency of the G20, and repeated in Kazan.
It was well-received and reflected in the declaration, which called “for a more equitable, just, democratic and balanced multipolar world order”.
Members reaffirmed “our support for a comprehensive reform of the United Nations, including its security council, with a view to making it more democratic, representative, effective and efficient, and to increase the representation of developing countries in the council’s memberships”.
This would allow the security council not only to respond to global challenges but to “support the legitimate aspirations of emerging and developing countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including Brics countries, to play a greater role in international affairs, in particular in the United Nations, including its security council”.
South Africa managed to convince members to endorse the aspirations of African countries for at least two permanent seats in the council, as formalised in the African Union’s Ezulwini Consensus in 2005.
Political analyst Sanusha Naidoo said the summit marked a moment of reflection among nations who diverge on many burning issues as to their place and possible common purpose in a shifting world order.
“Brics is, in some way, not seen as an alliance, but as a forum. It is about this consensus underpinned by the right to agree to disagree. At the point where we are now, the international system is in this unpredictable spectrum and what do you do?
“So the question would be: how do countries utilise this space? There is also a fear of not wanting to be caught in the crosswinds of what could become a serious global debt crisis.”
The nine current members account for 35% of global economic output and increased trade among member states remains one of the bloc’s aims. Early talk of a common currency to counter the dominance of the dollar has made way, though, for the more muted though still complex goal of promoting global acceptance of local currency.
The summit did not deal with this in any detail, although the ambition is reflected in its resolutions.
“The presidency of Brazil will deal with that exclusively. They will take forward the issue of a payment system that will deal with trading in local currencies,” a South African official said.
Brazil will also steer the next round of talks on expanding membership, which is likely to leave it with the delicate issue of neighbouring Venezuela’s aspirations to join the bloc