Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday underscored that the 2024 BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, will signify reaching unprecedented levels of interaction among the BRICS nations.
“I think that the summit in Kazan this October will mark the achievement of new heights in the interaction between the BRICS countries,” the Russian Foreign Minister said.
Addressing the impact of the association’s expansion on Russia’s chairmanship this year, he elaborated on what to anticipate from Russia’s leadership of the group, “We entered 2024 with no historical experience of expanding unification. It wasn’t clear how the lapping process would go or what would come of it. But today, with a third of the chairmanship behind us, the engagement has gained full momentum and we are moving at an increasing pace towards success.”
As of Jan 1, 2024, Russia assumed the chairmanship of BRICS, an intergovernmental organization comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, along with four new members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates.
BRICS welcomed Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates as new full members, signaling a significant expansion of the association’s influence and its role in global affairs.
Throughout its BRICS Chairmanship, the Russian side will persist in its efforts across all three primary domains: politics and security, economy and finance, and humanitarian cooperation.
“It is worth considering that there has been no example of an entity doubling its membership so far,” Lavrov added.
He emphasized that all the new members are displaying remarkable enthusiasm and are prepared to contribute substantively and professionally to the agenda developed by the Russian Chairmanship in consultation with all participants.
“The second thing, of course, for some of the recruits, was the volume and scope of the work that we are doing in BRICS, which was a bit of a surprise. It is not even so much the number of events, but rather the multi-level mechanism of interaction, formats in which new ideas and certain traditions are worked out, initiatives are introduced into the fabric of BRICS work, and they are implemented,” he added.