Vladimir Putin hosts Global South, seeks to counterbalance West’s clout

China’s Xi Jinping, Modi and other global leaders arrived Tuesday in the Russian city of Kazan for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies that the Kremlin hopes to turn into a rallying point for defying the Western liberal order.

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, the three-day meeting also offers a powerful way to demonstrate the failure of US-led efforts to isolate Russia over its action in Ukraine. Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov touted the summit as “the largest foreign policy event ever held” by Russia, with 36 countries attending and more than 20 of them represented by heads of state.

Observers see the BRICS summit as part of the Kremlin’s efforts to showcase support from the Global South amid spiralling tensions with the West and help expand economic and financial ties.

Proposed projects include the creation of a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network SWIFT and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told Putin that the international situation was gripped by chaos but that Beijing’s strategic partnership with Moscow was a force for stability amid the most significant changes seen in a century.

Russia and China, pushing back against perceived humiliations of the 1991 Soviet collapse and centuries of European colonial dominance of China, have sought to portray the West as decadent and in decline.