AFP, UFA :
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday welcomed the leaders of emerging powers for a summit Moscow hopes will show it not isolated despite the standoff with the West over Ukraine.
The Kremlin sees BRICS – a group of emerging economies that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as a growing economic and political influence to challenge Western hegemony.
Moscow’s ties with BRICS have become more vital amid the damage inflicted on Russia’s economy by Western sanctions, and Putin’s exclusion from the Group of Eight gathering, which met last month as the G7.
BRICS “illustrates a new polycentric system of international relations” demonstrating the increasing influence of “new centres of power,” Foreign
Sergei Lavrov said in a statement published on Wednesday.
Held this year in the city of Ufa some 1,100 kilometres east of Moscow, the summit itself starts on Thursday, following a day of bilateral meetings between Putin and the other leaders.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday welcomed the leaders of emerging powers for a summit Moscow hopes will show it not isolated despite the standoff with the West over Ukraine.
The Kremlin sees BRICS – a group of emerging economies that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as a growing economic and political influence to challenge Western hegemony.
Moscow’s ties with BRICS have become more vital amid the damage inflicted on Russia’s economy by Western sanctions, and Putin’s exclusion from the Group of Eight gathering, which met last month as the G7.
BRICS “illustrates a new polycentric system of international relations” demonstrating the increasing influence of “new centres of power,” Foreign
Sergei Lavrov said in a statement published on Wednesday.
Held this year in the city of Ufa some 1,100 kilometres east of Moscow, the summit itself starts on Thursday, following a day of bilateral meetings between Putin and the other leaders.
