BRICS Summit: Guterres in Kazan, Putin continues his diplomatic marathon

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrived in Russia on Wednesday morning to attend the BRICS summit in Kazan, where he is expected to discuss Ukraine with Vladimir Putin on Thursday, a meeting that would be a first on Russian soil since 2022.

With this BRICS summit, Vladimir Putin intends to demonstrate the failure of the Western policy of economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation targeting his country since the assault by Russian troops in Ukraine in February 2022.

Before the summit formally opened on Wednesday morning, the Russian leader held a marathon of bilateral meetings on Tuesday, including talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

China is its major Asian partner, providing crucial economic support in the context of Western sanctions, and India has been criticized by the West for its purchases of large quantities of Russian oil since 2022.

– Erdogan in Kazan –

From left to right Chinese President Xi Jinping, United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meet at the BRICS in Kazan, Russia, on October 23, 2024 © POOL – MAXIM SHIPENKOV

Illustrating his desire to undermine Western “hegemony” over international relations and to push his vision of a multipolar world, Vladimir Putin is to meet on Wednesday with Venezuelan and Iranian presidents Nicolas Maduro and Massoud Pezeshkian, whose countries are resolutely in the anti-Western camp.

A meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also on the agenda for Wednesday. A member of NATO, Turkey is not a member of BRICS and has complex relations with both Russia and the West.

However, it announced in early September that it wanted to join the bloc, a calculation that was primarily economic, in line with the “strategic autonomy” sought by Ankara, observers point out.

The BRICS bloc represents nearly half of the world's population and nearly a third of the planet's GDP.

According to the Kremlin, on Thursday, it will be Antonio Guterres' turn, having arrived in Kazan, to meet with Vladimir Putin, with Ukraine as the topic of discussion.

The UN has not formally confirmed the meeting but said Tuesday that the secretary-general would meet with “a large number of leaders attending the summit.”

This meeting would be the first in Russia between the two men since April 2022, two months after the assault by Russian troops in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin had then told him that he believed in a “positive” outcome to the negotiations with Ukraine. Since then, Moscow and kyiv have ceased all official negotiations and their positions seem irreconcilable.

In Kazan, “the secretary-general will reaffirm his well-known positions on the war in Ukraine and the conditions for a just peace based on the charter and resolutions of the United Nations and international law,” stressed one of his spokespersons, Farhan Haq, on Tuesday.

Antonio Guterres, who has presented himself as an available mediator, has regularly stressed that the annexation of Ukrainian territories has “no place in the modern world”. “The war in Ukraine remains an open wound in the heart of Europe”, he said again in February.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had estimated on Monday evening that Mr. Guterres had made “the wrong choice” in agreeing to go to Kazan. “This only harms the reputation of the UN,” the ministry criticized on X.

Image courtesy of brics-russia2024.ru of Antonio Guterres upon his arrival at Kazan airport, Russia, on October 22, 2024 © Photo host brics-russia2024.ru – Alexey FILIPPOV

With four members (Brazil, Russia, India, China) when it was created in 2009 and having integrated South Africa in 2010, the bloc now called BRICS (the initials of these states in English) was joined this year by four other countries (Ethiopia, Iran, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates).

– Xi-Modi meeting –

On the sidelines of the summit, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi are to hold their first bilateral meeting in five years on Wednesday, according to the ministry Indian Foreign Affairs.

It is about a possible warming between China and India, the two most populous countries in the world, after a settlement on a border dispute. They share a 3,500-kilometer border.

Clashes on the border between the Chinese region of Tibet and the Indian region of Ladakh left at least 20 dead on the Indian side and four among the Chinese in June 2020.

This episode had greatly strained bilateral relations and India sought to limit Chinese investments, in particular banning Chinese applications such as TikTok.

But India said on Monday that it had reached an agreement with China, which it confirmed the next day, on patrols in disputed border areas.

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