By Vestnik Kavkaza
On November 15-16th in the Australian city of Brisbane a G20 summit took place. It was marked by a specific political color, even though the G20 is still an economic union. As for real economics, it was discussed by the heads of countries and their governments, which are members of BRICS. This took place ahead of G20 summit.
Participants in the BRICS summit – the President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, the head of China Xi Jinping, the Premier of India Narendra Modi, and the President of South Africa Jacob Zuma – were invited by Vladimir Putin to the next summit in Ufa on July 8-9th.
“The fact that a meeting of the heads of BRICS countries was held within the G20 summit is thought to be the most important thing,” Alexander Gusev, the head of the Center for Strategic Development of the CIS Countries of the RAS Institute for Europe, says. “All countries of BRICS criticized Western sanctions against Russia. Now Indonesia and Argentina want to combine their positions in economic and political spheres with the developing union, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. BRICS countries are a power which is able to resist the monopolar structure of the world. The international community has faced a serious power, which resists the hegemony of the U.S. for the first time.”
Boris Volkhonsky, the head of the Asia Sector at the Center for Asia and the Middle East of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, notes contradictions between the economic goals of the G20 and the sanctions which have been launched by participants of the forum against each other: “The G20 set a goal to increase its GDP by 2%, but simultaneously the regime of sanctions should work. On the other hand, sanctions are not only an obstacle on the path of economic development, but also a motivation for searching for new ways out. Not only Russia suffers from sanctions; India regularly suffers from the regime. The UK rejected imports of Indian mango, while American courts make decisions on Indian pharmaceutical companies.”
Speaking about the prospects of cooperation within BRICS, Andrei Volodin, a professor of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry, stresses the importance of cooperation between Russia and India in the military industrial sphere: “We should look attentively at critical technologies and think how we can use them. India sent at least 50 requests for a fifth-generation fighter plane. Most of the requests were treated positively by our institutions. I should just say that we shouldn’t have physical goals; the most important thing is to develop the process positively. ”
