A Potemkin Summit
Some reflections on last week’s BRICS summit hosted by Putin
The brainchild of the Western financial services industry more than 20 years ago has grown like a cancer to be an opportunity for Russia’s current rehabilitation. This is at a time when Russia is increasing its atrocities in Ukraine, even utilizing the resources of a global pariah that even Russia had sanctioned in the past.
Ironic? Certainly. An aberration? Hardly! The West has, unwittingly mostly, done much to enhance its greatest perils over the last century. And so, the West will suffer the consequences.
The original BRIC (now BRICS+) was the brainchild of an American investment banker from Goldman Sachs to spur investments in emerging economies. The time was 2001 and Vladimir Putin was just getting started as Russia’s president. By the time the idea began taking root in 2006 at the UN, Putin was serving his second term as the Russian president. He was beginning to flex his muscles but mostly with threats and also clandestinely where he excelled. Brazil, Russia, India, and China were the emerging economies and democracies, mostly in name only, that formed the original union.
Putin was an unknown, but he should not have been. After all, he had been a KGB operative with the rank of colonel for a long time before Yeltsin brought him in as his successor. During the formative years after 2006, Putin really flexed, invading Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. For some reason, this did not deter the members or new applicants.
The recent BRICS Summit in Kazan, a city inside the Tatarstan Republic of Russia, was a Potemkin display expertly directed by Russia and Putin. True, ultimately, Russia did not achieve all it wanted since there were few tangible results and its aggression in Ukraine was not manifestly approved or condoned by the participants.
See Also:
Russian missile attack in Dnipro targets key hospital, kills 5, injures 21, including children
Russia has suffered 17,800 casualties since start of Kursk incursion, Syrskyi claims
How the war in Ukraine should end
Big Explosion In Russia – Video: