Edward Lucas
Hello everyone and welcome wherever you’re tuning in for to this CEPA media call on the BRICS. I’m Edward Lucas, I’m here in London, and we have three CEPA panelists to give their thoughts and to answer questions. If you haven’t already seen it, there’s a very sharp piece in Foreign Policy called, Can BRICS Finally Take On the West, which has the subtitle, how an ad hoc gaggle of countries turn themselves into global revolutionaries, and why it might yet matter for the West. There’s a lot in that to unpack. I’m not sure, really it’s an ad hoc grouping because of the way it formed. I’m not quite sure what gaggle means. I’m not quite sure they’re global revolutionaries, and maybe it already matters to the West, but that just gives you a flavor of the wide range of takes which one can have on this grouping. And I will, just for those of you who are interested, I will put that in the chat on this zoom call. You can read it later. But let me now introduce our panelists in alphabetical order, we have Irina Busygina, who joins us from Berlin. She’s a senior fellow in the Democratic Resilience Program of CEPA and also the Davis Center at Harvard. She focuses on Russian foreign domestic policy, the Russia-EU relationship, post-Soviet Eurasia. We’ve also got Alexander Kolyandr, who’s here in London with me, though not in the same bit of London. He’s also from the Democratic Resilience Program and is a mathematician by trade, and has helped a lot in our work on analyzing the state of the Russian economy. And then we have Evgeny Roshchin who is in Washington, DC. He’s a visiting scholar at the Henry Kissinger Center for Global Affairs and at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, colloquially known as SAIS. So welcome to all of you, and welcome also to this fantastic array of talent we have joining us from the media. And I realize the people here on the court who could probably give these, given in to our long presentation themselves, rather than listening to us, but you’re going to have a chance to ask questions soon. So without further ado, I’m going to ask each of our opening panelists to give a few introductory thoughts, starting with you, Irina. Russia is more or less in the driving seat on BRICS, what are the dilemmas facing Putin and what are the opportunities? Don’t forget to unmute yourself. You’re muted, Irina.

Irina Busygina
Now I’m muted, right? So you can hear me now, right? Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. Lucas, thank you. Thank you very much. I will try to be short. And the question I was asking myself, you know, regarding to the, with, with regards to Russia presidency in the BRICS and the summit in Kazan. So my question that I asked myself was, what is, what is, what is the driver of of the Russian interest to BRICS? Or there are several drivers of the Russian, this profound and expressed interest to this, to this particular organization? And, you know, and my logic, while I was trying to answer this question myself, my logic was the follows, right? So we know that that, and this is, this is quite trivial, and discussed many times that from one side, Russia, Russia, would like to avoid isolation. This is the question which challenges Russia since, since many years, I would say, since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and which was very much separated after this full-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine two and a half years ago. So one, so that one, we can, we can, we can postulate, so this is isolation. The other thing is building alternatives, right? Building alternatives to the to the Western financial institution, to the Western institution, building the institutions which are kind of considered to be led, led and operated, mostly by the, by by the Western countries. Okay, so we, we kind of, we have two concepts: isolation, preventing the isolation, and the other thing would be to to build some, to build something alternative. However, you know, to pursue these two purposes of Russia, you would need to to follow two different strategies. And this is, this is what I mean. So to be to be able to or to play as if, to be able to sell, to sell this idea that Russia is not as an isolated of a country, what do you need? You need to expand the membership in the in the BRICS because this is about representation. And believe me, this is one of the Putin favorite, favorite words that he uses all the time. And this word is a realist. So this is about reality. So look at the reality. So when he annexes the territories, he said, look at that reality, his reality and and the same, the same argument is used regarding regarding BRICS. So this is about representation, okay, the BRICS countries. This is, this is, I don’t know exactly, but I think this is, like 40% of the of the global economic output. So this is, this is more than a half of the population, of the world population, are living in the BRICS countries now. So this is about the expansion, right? So this is this about the membership. More membership, more representation, more reality. The BRICS is, is real, and so less, less argumentation therefore, that Russia is isolated. This is from one, from one, from one kind of thing, from one side. From the other side, however, the more, this is about, about building alternatives. This is, this is, this is a different strategy, this is a different approach, because to build something viable to be to build something real institutionally, institutionally, you do not need, you would not need that many members with their all the similarities that they have, and they’re, they’re completely dissimilar these countries you can, you would hardly imagine any dimension of this, of this country similarities. So for me, this is, this is kind of the playing between two, or sitting between two chairs, you know, either representation, or building something, or providing an institutional content and building some reliable institution, institutional mechanism. However, you know, the the, not the problem, but, but, but what I wanted to stress, and this will be my, my, my last point, that in in the implementation of any of these, of these, of these things, anti isolation and extension, or building alternatives and no extension, let’s say, at least in the foreseeable future, Putin in either of these, of these things, Putin has, can win something. It’s not a lewd option. You know, he can, he can show either this or that. And this is, and this is, I would say, normal Putin approach. So if I don’t win here, I win here, I’m not a loser anyway. So, and this is, this is, and this is, this is, I think, I think it is a crucial, a crucial point. So I will either this or that. If this doesn’t work, the other option will work, and then the this will be framed and sold and so on and so forth. Thank you. So these were my initial thoughts.

Edward Lucas
Well, Irina, thanks very much for that. And I think it’s, it’s a good question for the other countries who are trying to support Ukraine and deal with Putin, how we’ve managed to get him into this situation where he has a series of Win-Win options. And these are nice choices to have if you’re a dictator who’s supposed to be internationally isolated. I want to come to Alexander next and ask about what this means in terms of Russian sanctions busting. We’ve tried hard since the start of the full-scale invasion, indeed for years before that, to apply sanctions to Russia. They mostly haven’t worked. If they had worked, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now. And one of the reasons that they don’t work is that Russia is getting help from the BRICS countries. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Alexander Kolyandr
Yes, hi. It’s interesting to see how the economic part of this BRICS union moved in the past, what? What is it? 20 years. From the idea of fixing, you know, rebuild and replaster, the post Bretton Woods international financial system, so that it becomes more inclusive and more profitable for the countries like Russia, China, India, and other developing countries. How it moved into, into the idea of replacing the international, the current international financial system, or how to build a parallel system. And obviously Russia is in the driving seat of that, not because of desire, but rather of necessity. Because Russia, at the beginning, Russia was trying to use BRICS as an alternative to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, just as a precaution. So this idea didn’t fly, because Russia was excluded from the BRICS joint bank after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Then the next idea, which became extremely politicized, was how to create a BRICS currency. This idea, well, I’m not ready to say it hasn’t, it didn’t fly, but it somewhat moved to the, to the backstage, because now top priority on the Russian agenda is how to build a cross-border BRICS payment system. In other words, how to create cross-border payments system which would allow BRICS Plus without any usage of the US dollar. Russian Finance Ministry, last week, proposed some kind of an alternative organization for BRICS, which includes this idea of cross-border payment. However, the amount of intrinsic problems inside the BRICS Union, in my view, makes this cross-border payment system a kind of a red herring which would not fly anywhere higher than the idea of BRICS currency. Something might be achieved, but in my head, there is no place for other missed calls and slogans like, everything is lost, dollar will be replaced by the new BRICS currency. It will not.

Edward Lucas
I will believe in the alternative to the dollar when the rich people in Russia and China start keeping their money in one of these other currencies. But for now, they seem to be very keen, as far as their own savings are concerned, to keep them in the in the greenback. Evgeny, let’s finish our opening round with your thoughts on the future of the BRICS and what Russia is getting out of it. Thank you for unmuting. Over to you.

Evgeny Roshchin
Thank you Edward and thank you for having me. Indeed, just in the last couple of weeks I think we heard from everyone in Russia that the upcoming summit will be the biggest international event of the year. Pretty much literally everything, from the speakers of both houses to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who were saying things like that. But what do they actually mean? Because even the loyalist experts within Russia now ponder over the question whether BRICS will ever move beyond what they call a debating society or debating club. And this is indeed a key question because this time at Kazan, we will have an extended BRICS summit where I believe they will have to make a decision who these new members will be. Will it be the same as the older members with the same kind of voice and rights or not? Or are we going to face a structure with a two tier, two tier system? And I think behind the rhetoric there is a huge concern, even within Russia, whether these new members might become their equals within this organization. Or if that happens, then Russia might not have any leverage in the organization in the near future because the chairmanship will pass over to other countries who will impact the decision making. That is why I think it is indeed going to be a keystone moment in the history of organization, where, behind the rhetoric, Russia will try to commit as little as possible to the institutional development of BRICS itself. Therefore, the idea of membership will be something that will become an inherent obstacle to the deepening of of the organization. That is why what I’m expecting from from this meeting is, like I said, many big words, some decisions that we will still need to watch regarding cross-border payments, but eventually, and this is where perhaps I’m more skeptical than Irina, in terms of, you know, win, win situation, the only win that I see at the moment will be an attempt, indeed, to whitewash Russia’s reputation. For everyone in that meeting will remember the outcome of the United Nations General Assembly votes on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And some of the members who will be present at Kazan voted against Russia, including Brazil, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and representatives of Saudi Arabia. So for this kind of summit, I think Russia will have an agenda of showing it is not a wrong state. It is a player,

Edward Lucas
Right. Well, thank you. That’s a very important point that, if nothing else, this shows that Russia is not diplomatically isolated. But on the other hand, as you, as you point out, Russia doesn’t really like multilateral diplomacy, because multilateral diplomacy implies that other countries have a say in what Russia does, and that is not Putin’s way of doing things. I have loads of questions as a result of that, but we also have lots of people in the audience, the electronic audience, who I’m sure would like to ask questions. So if you want to make a point do please put your self off mute, turn your camera on, raise your electronic hand, and I will come to you. I’ve got the screen in front of, in front of me. One thing I want to ask is for about the similarities and differences between BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is the other big international, multilateral organization that Russia has been in since the beginning. And I’m wondering whether there’s any meaningful overlap between BRICS and the SCO or whether there are any interesting differences. I don’t know if anybody would like to jump in on that? Evgeny, what about you? Do you have any thoughts on the, should we see SCO and BRICS as two legs of the same table, or they both equally useless, or both equally pointful? Or how would you how would you look at them?

Evgeny Roshchin
I think they’re different. And from what I hear in the Russian press, Russia seems to believe that it has a greater leverage within BRICS, while China seems to dominate all the other platforms. In terms of the material outcomes, I also believe BRICS might have a greater promise to Russia, especially if they manage to arrive to decision regarding cross-border payments or things like that, that would facilitate the process of international trade and possibly the evasion of sanctions.

Edward Lucas
We’ve got a good question come in on oil trading, which I’m going to perhaps ask Alexander to look at in a moment, which is whether the BRICS expansion has any impact on global oil trading. But first of all, I want to come back to you, Irina, because I suspect your perspective on this is slightly different from Evgeny’s, and he was a little bit more pessimistic. You’re perhaps a bit more optimistic or positive about BRICS’ significance for Putin. Did you want to, did you want to come back on anything that Evgeny said?

Irina Busygina
Ah, thank you. Thank you very much, Lucas for this possibility, exactly for the for this possibility, to, to follow up on what, what Evgeny said. And, frankly speaking, I don’t think that he’s more pessimistic, I’m more optimistic, this is absolutely not about this dichotomy. So you know,it’s not about substance that much, but it’s about signaling. So it’s about symbolic meaning. So it’s about this kind of winning. You know, this is how you can sell it. And I would, I would give you kind of one of the example, how, how these signals, that BRICS means something, how they are accepted in the other countries, you know, but BRICS, you know. So this is a narrative in the Central Europe, for instance, that, that the BRICS is an alternative to the European Union. Very recently the, I think it was Mr. Vulin, the Serbian vice Prime Minister, saying that, okay, that the European Union is too strict. European Union pose some kind of conditions, you know, to for the membership, and BRICS does not. So this is the real alternative, and this is how, this is how we can be a member without commitment, a member without conditions. So, I think, and this so, this is the, this, okay. I don’t say this is, I’m not optimistic. And for me, this is nothing more than than cheap speculations. But the problem is that for the part of the European political class, it works. It works. So this one thing that I wanted to say, and the other thing this is, if you allow me Lucas one minute, saying about Shanghai, Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS. Would you allow?

Edward Lucas
Sure, go ahead.

Irina Busygina
Thank you. Thank you very much, because this is a lot of what Evgeny was saying. I think this organizations are different in a way, you know, from the Russian perspective, and again, I’m centered on Russia, sorry for that, right? And from the Russian perspective, they’re very different in a way that this is about different agendas. Shanghai Cooperation Organization is not a global organization, it’s a regional organization. So basically, these are two great powers, or Russia, considered to be, would like to go, to be considered as great power, and their, their prospects is about Central Asia. So this is, this is more or less I would, I would probably compare them, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with the Eurasian Economic Union, but never with BRICs. This is completely different scale of Russian ambitions. And in this way, you know, these organizations are very different, so Russia tries to achieve different goals through BRICS in comparison with the Shanghai Corporation Organization. Thank you very much.

Edward Lucas
Super. Well thank, thank you for that. Very thought provoking. Alexander, I’m going to ask you next to look at Rosemary Griffin’s question. She’s [unintelligible], and she was asking, what’s the effect on global oil trading of BRICS expansion, and is there any prospect of BRICS becoming a platform for energy trade?

Alexander Kolyandr
Well, it’s definitely, it’s a very good question, and it’s definitely what Putin bought, which I think makes this question even more important. So first of all, to to make BRICS a new platform for energy trading, or in other words, to have to circumvent sanctions, Russia would need to think. First of all, it would need some kind of joint Insurance Institute which would allow Russia to sell oil to the ports of China, India or Turkey, without relying on all these price cap mechanism of which you definitely know. So it would be really useful for Russia to have some kind of a jointly accepted Insurance Institute and platform for BRICS countries. However, I don’t see any prospect of creating this overnight, that will take time, mostly because those countries do not have a developed insurance industry, and it’s only in Russia’s interest, and everyone else is quite happy to use Lloyd’s of London and SWIFT. And secondly, Russian needs the cross-border payment, which we’ve, we’ve already discussed, and this is also a problem because of the convertibility issues in the largest countries of the BRICS, namely, in Russia, China, in India, who happens to be Russia’s major oil trading partners. So that would be a problem too, but Russia is trying to, to move this issue. But, but once again, it’s only important for Russia because countries like China, India, Brazil and the rest are quite happy to use international SWIFT system and US corresponding banks. So yes, Russia would love to transform BRICS into an international or semi international oil trading platform. I do not expect Russia would succeed in achieving that overnight or in any, you know, foreseeable future, I would say on the 12 to 24 month horizon, I wouldn’t expect anything to change drastically. And when it comes to expansion of BRICS, I think the most important, or at least the most intriguing part, would be the role of Egypt, because if Russia manages to create the cross-border payment and persuade other BRICS countries to accept Russian or BRICS based insurance policies and Egypt is on the board, then it would be much cheaper, much easier for Russia’s, what we now know is Russian shadow fleet, but tomorrow, it may be something else. In other words, it would be much easier for Russia to push its oil through the straits, and that would cut cost of sales and makes Russian oil exports a little bit easier.

Edward Lucas
And there’s a very interesting related question, which we might just touch on here, from Ramah Nyang in Bloomberg, from Nairobi, who works for Bloomberg, who points out that the BRICS have a mixture of capital controls and managed foreign exchange rates. They don’t have a free trade agreement, and they don’t really have free movement of of capital. 15% of exports are within the BRICS countries, or within BRICS, t hey mainly trade with the rest of the world. So even if they did set up a competitor to SWIFT, they would have quite a lot more to do to meet their de-dollarization goal. I didn’t know if anyone wants to jump in on that, but I’m happy to have, have thoughts, it’s an excellent point, Ramah.

Alexander Kolyandr
Yes, it’s basically here. The question, if there was any, I just, I must add that there is also no free movement of, it’s not only the question of open capital account, I mean, free movement of capital, but there is also no free movement of goods and labor. And on top of that, why I think that any kind of an, you know, join BRICS, new BRICS based IMF, or cross-border trade would be a problem is because BRICS countries, well, the current BRICS countries are all running trade deficit when it comes to China, apart from Russia, and they, and with the only exception of India, they all depend on business cycles in China. So if China sneezes, the whole BRICS will, will get a flu with the with exception of India, and India would not be able to save the the block.

Edward Lucas
Right. That’s a very useful metaphor. If China sneezes, BRICS gets flu. So we’ve got a question from Ryan Robertson from Straight Arrow News, which I will come to in a moment. But if anyone else on the call wants to ask a question in the old fashioned way by putting their hand up or delivering it in person, I’m very happy to have that too. So Ryan’s question is, what about defense agreements with India when Putin is also trying to develop deeper ties with China? India and China are not to put it mildly, best, best friends, and India moving quite a lot closer to the West as a result of its worries about China. So how does Putin triangulate himself in that difficult Indian, Chinese, Russian relationship? Evgeny, I’ll come to you first and then Irina second.

Evgeny Roshchin
Yeah, thank you. And this is indeed a critical question, and the one that the BRICS watchers have been asking for quite a long time. The defense agreement with India while trying, you know, to do more of defense related trade with China during the war with Ukraine are the two key issues that speak back to the question of deepening. I’m afraid Putin doesn’t have that many options in this regard. That is why the overall prospect of developing BRICS into a more political organization with certain defense aspects to it is basically ruled out. This is another obstacle to the future of organization and how it might develop. I don’t think Putin has much room for maneuvering in this regard. So, yeah, this is another limit, and that’s why Putin will try to keep it less political.

Edward Lucas
Good. Irina, any thoughts from you on that?

Irina Busygina
Thank you Lucas, [unintelligible]. I probably agree with what Evgeny said, but I would like to add the following. So indeed, the situation doesn’t tell us something about the nature of BRICS, right? It does, it does tell us something because it would not be possible in the organization like the European Union, but it is possible in the organization like BRICS and it will tell us about the commitment. That you can and it also, it will tell me that to the countries, they have, I would say, a multi dimensional priorities or interest. Both of these countries have their clear interest to Russia and the membership in BRICS, you know, and there, and at the same time they have the conflict or tension and their rivalry and so on and so forth. But the membership in BRICS and the interest towards keeping different types of relationship with Russia does not prevent them to sit in this [unintelligible] organization, together, you know? And this is, this is my one point. The other point would be that, and this is what should be, I think, what should be added to every Russia, not inspired, but each international organization with Russian participation. It’s not only about multi, multilateralism, and probably not that much about multilateralism, but this is about bilateralism. That this, this organization which allows Putin to meet separately, with this, with the leaders. And this is, this is very important, and this is the same in Shanghai Cooperation Agreement, and this is the same in the Eurasian European Union, that Putin tries through the multi- using, you know, formally, formally, multilateral formats- to use the bilateral approach. Using these formats to promote and to develop his bilateral negotiations with the certain leaders. So this, this is and this, these leaders of India and China understand this, and they are ready to do it with Putin. So, and if the membership in BRICS is, is, is kind of a condition to do that, to push forward this bilateral, bilateral, not multilateral perspective, this is, this is the way how they can do that. Thank you.

Edward Lucas
That’s a very interesting point, I think, that this is a multilateral format for bilateral meetings. It’s a good, good, good way of thinking about it. So we’re back to finance again. There’s a question from Pamela Faulk, who says, Is it likely that the BRICS will be able to create its goal of a gold backed currency? And of course, gold is absolutely rocketing at the moment. The gold bugs are all very happy because this supposed barbaric relic is yet again, having a renaissance as a store of value. And certainly, Russia is a major gold producer, and South Africa is as well, and China has a lot of gold, so there’s, and India’s got a great gold habit, so there’s plenty of gold around. But I must say, I’d be rather skeptical about this. But Alexander, what do you think of the prospect for a BRICS gold backed currency?

Alexander Kolyandr
Well, I would be extremely surprised. Especially now, because, well, the whole idea of having a common gold backed currency is to have more or less synchronized monetary policy and low inflation. But at the moment, take, for example, Russia and China. Russia is constantly raising its, its rate, while China is constantly slashing it to boost its economy. Russia doesn’t need to boost its economic production and needs to tighten this cruise, while China needs exactly the opposite. And if you add to that a possible dislocation between the prices of oil and gold, then you’ll see where the problem is, because effectively, Russian ruble is partly backed by oil, and say, currencies of the Gulf States are much more dependent on on oil, and if there is a gold standard between all of them, that create a lot of problems for many countries. If you want to see all those problems in a petri dish or but in a much, much lighter way, just think about Euro, Nordic countries and Greece, what, 10 years ago. And now imagine the same problem on much, much bigger scale, and not where, we are not talking about Greece, which is important, but relatively small, but about countries like China and Russia. So I would not expect BRICS to, you know, to give birth to some kind of a joint gold standard, whatever they call it.

Edward Lucas
Well, thank you very much for that very decisive answer. I wonder if there’s any kind of financial instrument where one could bet against this happening and see what the markets think of the plausibility. We’ve got another question in again from Ramah, who, Ramah, I think you’ve got this amazing caveat of answering your own question absolutely brilliantly, but I will reach out anyway and see if the panel wants to add. You say, whatever the larger goals are, sort of [unintelligible] or insurance, or whatever, BRICS Plus is undermined by the fact that the countries have, the block has so many countries that don’t see eye to eye. For example, Saudi Arabia and Iran don’t get on, Egypt is helping Somalia on as a way of getting it Ethiopia because the dam project, all the countries in the prop would be, block would be wary of trading an American hegemon for a Chinese one. So is there anything that these countries can really work on together? So let’s see if we can find one thing that we could say will be a clear takeaway from the Kazan Summit that Putin will be able to say is a success. Evgeny, what, if you had to bet on one successful takeaway from Kazan? What would it be?

Evgeny Roshchin
I agree. This is an excellent question that actually puts a finger on the core aspect of this gathering that is ripe with disagreements. But indeed, what does draw countries to this new organization? And I think the reasons are political. Well, first of all, some of the countries might be driven by the concern with the status recognition. Basically, that is to say that they want their voice to be amplified through this platform, be it Serbia, be it Egypt, or anyone else. Why would they need their voice being amplified? That’s for another reason, and this is, I think, where they want to exploit the so called bandwagoning effect. They’re seeing that two permanent members of the Security Council organizing, you know, to do something together. They’ve got another major players, such as India, Brazil, South Africa, on board. So for the rest of the world, that signal, you know, that something is happening, and other countries perhaps, are thinking, why not exploiting this happening in our own advantage? So by joining this kind of platform, I believe they perhaps might be getting some leverage in their conversation with the broader West. Basically, I don’t mean they will sincerely commit to anything within BRICS organization, something you know, deeper on the institutional level, but their membership, their participation, might open, you know, wider opportunities in their conversation with the US, with other global constitutions, institutions, I’m sorry, and this will allow, perhaps, to get back to the, you know, ever returning question of fairness in international politics, so that the so called Global South will have a stronger voice in this conversations

Edward Lucas
That, that’s quite, quite paradoxical, the way that the main thing about BRICS is it’s a bargaining chip for dealing with the West, rather, rather than anything you actually expect from a positive side. Irina, if you had to guess for one positive takeaway from Kazan, where all the members would say, thank goodness we went to Kazan, it wasn’t just the beautiful architecture, we got something done. What would that takeaway be, if any?

Irina Busygina
Ah, you know, I would say, Lucas. I would, I would to your provocative question. I would, I would make the provocative response. It doesn’t matter, you know, so this is anything would be, would be kind of, I don’t think it would be, it will be something, something kind of practical there. I don’t think so. But it will be, it will be, again, it will be a signal, a signal that they were together, they sat there together, and their representation was very, you know, high and wide and so and so and they it would be the, it would be, you know, in any case, they can say, we made a considerable step forward. Again, rational rhetoric. So, what was the step? What was the direction of this step? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It was, it was. It is a fair accompli, you know, it happened. It happened. And this is, for this reason, it’s great, but please give me half a minute to not to respond to Ramah’s question, what Evgeny was just talking about. So this is, it’s not a question, it’s an answer. Indeed, he gave a fantastic answer, but I would say that that you know these countries, so this is again, the discussion how these these countries, which don’t look at each other’s eyes, which don’t like each other, how they sit in this one group which we name as BRICS, BRICS Plus. So for me, you know, I would, I see it very pragmatic, very pragmatic. It’s absolutely not a value driven organization. It’s a pragmatic organization. And this is a low cost and low kind of, less low risk organization. It’s an instrument. So why not to use this instrument? But the problem is that this instrument can, can only be used to dig this, this type of, oh, but it’s okay, it’s okay. So, I mean, why not to use it? And this is this pragmatism is everywhere when you talk about, about it’s absolutely, absolutely instrumental and pragmatic thing. Thank you.

Edward Lucas
Thank you for that, Irina. And we’ve got another excellent question about Turkey coming up, which we’ll come to in a moment, from Selcan in Ankara. But first of all, Alexander, you should have your chance just to say, if you could, if you could write the communique for the Kazan Summit, what would be the key paragraph?

Alexander Kolyandr
No, I’m not. I’m not very good in political speak, but I think that the main point in there should be that Russia is not isolated economically and Russia can fight the sanctions through BRICS. And there should be a paragraph which says that, which should be. I don’t know how to be worded, because, on the one hand, they should say that the global trade should be free from the Western sanctions and limitations, but on the other hand, it should lambast the globalized economy and global trade based on the US dollar and the Western, you know, clearing houses and procedures. So I think they are, economically it should say something that the real global trade should be achieved through the new institutions, as the old ones, dominated by the Western countries and the United States, have discredited themselves by the sanctions against Russia.

Edward Lucas
Right. Thank you. Well, that that sounds to me, quite plausible, a sort of general denunciation of sanctions and sort of symbolic shift and highlighting a symbolic shift in the global balance of power. But go ahead, someone was just jumping in there. No, I want to get to. Someone is not muted and should be muted. But let’s get to Selcan’s question now, which is about NATO, because Turkey, which is a NATO member, has said, at least President Erdogan I think has said, that Turkey wants to join the BRICS. I’m not sure if he’s actually going to be represented formally in Kazan. But what would that? What does that say? Is that just posturing by Turkey, or would it, could that somehow put BRICS, BRICS into a more, BRICS Plus into a more important global league? Nice, easy question. Let me give it to Evgeny first.

Evgeny Roshchin
Yeah, and again, this is an excellent one, pointing at the same direction as the question we had earlier about India and China. Should Turkey join the organization? I think it will basically mean a block on the way of deeper integration within this organization. So I think we will see something like well functioning mechanism, but, but it’s critical in terms of the intensity of coordination we could expect. Since the political integration will be ruled out, I’m sure we will see a lot of coordination effort, like, for example, after Crimea, Russia was the chair of this BRICS Summit in 2015 and that year saw an incredible increase in coordination. Various committees were set up, hundreds of meetings organized, and now we are seeing pretty much the same with Russia’s chairmanship following the major crisis that Russia organized itself. In Kazan, we are now seeing a huge volume of organizational activities, and with Turkey, it will only multiply. But it will multiply to facilitate what I previously called the development of a debating society, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but this will be about coordination and the endless discussion, which some countries might profit from. But I think the membership of Turkey in this organization will mean that it will no go, it will not go deeper in the political integration and defense integration, in particular.

Edward Lucas
If I was Russia, I would have mixed feelings about Turkey joining the sort of Russian-centered element of BRICS, and Turkey’s got its own very clear views about the Black Sea and the importance of Turkish presence there. They have their own interests in terms of exports through the Bosphorus and so on. Irina and Alexander, do either of you want to jump in on the question of Turkey? We also, I should mention, we have a couple of other, I think Malaysia and Azerbaijan are also going to be admitted to BRICS at this summit. So not just Turkey, but other new members too.

Irina Busygina
Thank you. Thank you very much. How, how you say it nice and easy question, right? There are many nice and easy questions about particular, particular candidates to BRICS and not candidates to BRICS. I would, I would like to mention another country which is, which I have a lot of interest in, and this is Kazakhstan, which is, which is Russian, Russian, ally with the longest records. How, however, Kazakhstani, the leadership, refused to, in the foreseeable future, to be, to be a membership of BRICS. And this is, this is, this is also sorry, I would just want to say that there are many very interesting individual cases, however, to be brief and to answer exactly to the question of Selcan, would have a broader impact, the Turkey bid. I would say, I would say, rather no, no than yes, because yes, there are, there are different perspectives. Evgeny brought us one perspective, Lucas, you brought in another perspective from Turkey membership, and my perspective is that third perspective. And my perspective is, yes, Turkey, Turkey is a, is a NATO member state, but this is a very peculiar NATO member state. This is, this is a very special NATO member state. And Turkey is not considered to be, although it’s a NATO, it’s a NATO membership. But it’s not considered in the world as a member, as a member of the Western Community of the countries, right? It’s more, it’s a different thing. So I would say that, and with Turkey trying for decades to join the EU and now, now this perspective is closed, as far as I understand. So, Turkey is a different it will create immense problems if Turkey will join, immense problems. But not necessarily because of Turkey NATO membership, plus, but not necessarily only because of that.

Edward Lucas
Yeah, so we have a Turkey problem, first and foremost, in NATO, or maybe Turkey has a NATO problem, putting it the other way around, or Europe problem, but the the BRICS accession request is a symptom of this rather than a problem in itself. Alexander, I get to come to you next, and I think probably we’ll wind up unless there are any more questions, any thoughts on Turkey, or indeed, final concluding thoughts from you on anything?

Alexander Kolyandr
I have very little to add, because, from the economic point of view, what Russia needs from Turkey, it already gets, which is conduit of international trade, and the door through which it can circumvent certain sanctions. But Turkey, being under pressure from the United States is not an extremely reliable partner for any sanctions boosting program. So I don’t think that Turkey joining BRICS will change anything economically for Russia, neither it would done anything to the Chinese plants, because they just compete for the same natural resources, but they don’t, they are not in the same boat economically. So I don’t think that it would change anything.

Edward Lucas
Right, good. Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground, I think. And I’m going to hand back to my colleague from CEPA, Sarah Krajewski, in a moment. But just final word, Evgeny, Irina, just any other point you want to make, in addition to all the ground we’ve covered before, I hand back final, final thoughts. You again if you’re going to give some advice to Putin about this, or indeed advice to the, advice, advice to this. But naturally, I’ve got a better question. What is, what’s the West getting wrong here? If you’re giving advice to the person in only the State Department, the European External Action Service, the British Foreign Office, if you’ve got a meeting of Western decision makers who deal with BRICS, and they’re saying, okay, so this thing, clearly, is going on. What advice would you give them? Would you say, ignore it? Would you say, compete with it? Would you say, constrain it? What? What’s, what’s the, what’s the advice to the, to Western decision makers about this? Your advice to the White House, please.

Evgeny Roshchin
Edward, thank you for this one. With everything we’ve said, it’s still a curious thing to observe, and please try to watch the grievances that all these new members will be raising at the summit. So one of the things, well, actually a bunch of things to watch from the White House or elsewhere, would be to see what sort of idea of membership that they will develop develop at this summit. Whether that will lead to the discussion of the institutional developments, whether they can commit to building institutions at all. And then furthermore, let’s see at what types of pledges that the countries will be able to make at this summit,and learn from all this. And learn the lessons for the upcoming summits about the climate change, like the next COP summit could be something that could respond to BRICS and try to adopt the institutional policies, policies at the institutions such as IMF or World Bank, reopen the conversation with the Global South.

Edward Lucas
Right. Well, that’s a very good practical suggestion. Irina, your advice to the White House, how to deal with, how to deal with BRICS, constrain, ignore, compete.

Irina Busygina
Oh, oh, I, you know, I, I even, you know, no, this is, this is, this is a responsibility, Lucas, this is such a responsibility that I’m, I’m shaking.But, still, I would give, don’t take as an advice, please, it’s absolutely not an advice, but this is, this is, this is just two ideas, I would say. The first idea is that, since decades, non democratic states are creating their own organizations, international organizations. It’s absolutely, okay, there are so many organizations, you know, they are mushrooming each year, and many of them don’t work. At least they don’t, and this is a good thing sometimes, and at least they don’t work, how they are, they are the drivers, the country, drivers of this organization. Thirdly, they would work. So BRICS is one of them, and it’s not the least relevant, but it’s also not the most relevant. So this isjust as a phenomenon of time, like a zeitgeist, you know? So this is, this is like, it’s our time and but what I would like, not, what I would kind of not recommend, as to take very much BRICS as a potential, as a potential, to see the constraints of BRICS, not to see it as a future European Union. It’s not a regional organization, and it would never be. It’s not an integration, and it would never be. If you want to deal with BRICS, deal first disaggregated, not aggregated in your in your brain, but disaggregated to the individual level. And look at the relationship bilateral inside the BRICS. This would be the most important. Thank you.

Edward Lucas
Good. Well, thank you so much. We have, the time has gone amazingly quickly, and I had another 25 questions I’d have happily asked had I been able to but we’ll save those for next time. And I’m going to now ask my friend Sarah to unmute herself, appear on the screen and give us a few pointers. What’s next? Sarah? What do we need put in our calendars?

Sarah Krajewski
Thanks, thanks, Edward. Thank you so much to our speakers and everyone for joining us and your great questions. I will be in touch later today with a recording and rough, auto-generated transcript of this call. A full transcript will be found later in the week on our website. If you have any other queries or want to get in touch with any of our speakers, you can email me at press@cepa.org and I’d be happy to put you in touch. So until the next briefing like this, thank you so much for your time, and enjoy the rest of your days.