‘Global South’ interested in joining BRICS – as it’s ‘tone deaf’ to anti-Russia rhetoric
For Vladimir Putin, the optics could not be better.
More than two and a half years into his war in Ukraine, he is shaking hands this week with not just one world leader, or two, but more than 20.
China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian…there’s even Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of a NATO member state and EU candidate country.
They have all come to the Russian city of Kazan for the BRICS summit of emerging economies.
As you might expect, the Russian president was positively beaming as he sat down with various heads of state for a string of one-on-one meetings.
The message from the Kremlin is loud and clear – the West’s efforts to isolate Russia have not worked. Instead of losing friends, Moscow has made them.
Mr Putin and Mr Xi shake hands during their meeting on the sidelines of BRICS Summit. Pic: AP
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“It shows something about the weakness of the sanctions regime,” Mark Galeotti, principal director of Mayak Intelligence, told Sky News.
“There was a lot of exaggerated sense as to how the West could put a stranglehold on Russia, and many countries are, frankly, not willing to play those games.
“It highlights the degree to which in this incredibly complex, multi-connected, modern world, it’s very hard to actually isolate any country, especially one as large and as engaged in global commerce as Russia.”
Mr Putin embraces Narendra Modi during their meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan. Pic: Reuters
The first BRIC summit was in 2009, involving Brazil, Russia, India and China. South Africa joined in 2010 to add the S on the end of the acronym.
For much of the last decade and a half, the group has been dismissed by economists as an alphabet soup of countries – too spread out and fundamentally different from one another to form any meaningful alliance.
But in the last few years, it has grown more significant and seemingly influential.
‘A powerful platform’
The group has expanded its membership to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia has also been invited to join, and according to Russia, there are dozens of other countries that want to become part of the club.
That’s despite Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the West’s attempts to cast Mr Putin as a war criminal.
“A lot of countries in the Global South are really tone deaf to rhetoric about Russia breaking the rules,” Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, told Sky News.
“All the questions ‘what about Iraq?’ are not driven by Russian propaganda points but by genuine concern about the US abusing its role as the most powerful country.
“They realise that the current international order underwritten by the US doesn’t really deliver for them and they don’t know what the alternative is but BRICS is really a powerful platform where these issues can be discussed.”
Top of the agenda this week is an alternative platform for international payments, which Mr Putin hopes will end the dominance of the dollar and make the BRICS economies immune to Western sanctions.
Because despite all the talk of sanctions not having the desired effect, they have caused Russia problems.
It’s been cut off from international markets, and more recently, the country’s had difficulties with cross-border trade, even with friendly countries like China, because it’s linked to the dollar and there’s a threat of secondary sanctions by the US.
An entirely new system, not involving the dollar, would bypass those issues. But it’s unlikely to come to fruition this week.
For one, the idea is still in its infancy. What’s more, not all the BRICS members, like India and Brazil, share Mr Putin’s anti-Western sentiment.
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“There is concern among these countries about how close you want to move towards Russia or an agenda that’s seen as enabling this horrible war from Russia in Ukraine,” Mr Gabuev said.
Brazil and India are not alone. Saudi Arabia and Turkey also share strong ties with the West. Their presence in Kazan can be seen more as an attempt to play both sides, rather than overt support of Russia.
But that does not seem to matter to the residents of Kazan. Most people we have spoken to here view the summit as the Kremlin intends.
“This is a wonderful event,” Alexandra told us. “I think that this will be a breakthrough and that the world has become multipolar.”
Alexei is another who is proud of his president.
“He is looking in all directions and it’s bearing fruit,” he said. “If someone thinks we’re isolated, it is probably only their problem.”
Not everyone shares that opinion, though.
Favaris points to Russia’s closer ties with North Korea: “If you are friends with an outcast, then you have fallen lower than ever.”
Russia has launched a “massive” drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital overnight, after Moscow itself was targeted.
Amid flailing peace talks, the Kremlin’s nightly attacks on Ukraine continued.
Ukraine war – follow the latest updates
A large-scale Russian attack through the night into Sunday injured at least 11 in Kyiv and killed three people in towns surrounding the capital.
There were attacks elsewhere as well, including drone strikes in Mykolaiv, where a residential building was hit.
An apartment building destroyed after a Russian attack in Mykolaiv. Pic: State Emergency Service of Ukraine
‘Massive’ attack
In Kyiv, the city’s administration warned “the night will be difficult”, as people were urged to remain in shelters.
The city’s mayor Vitaliy Klitschko described it as a “massive” attack.
He said: “Explosions in the city. Air defence forces are working. The capital is under attack by enemy UAVs. Do not neglect your safety! Stay in shelters!”
It came after at least 15 people were injured in attacks the night prior.
Russia claimed it also faced a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday, and that it intercepted and destroyed around 100 of them near Moscow and across Russia’s central and southern regions.
A municipality worker cleans up after a Russian drone strike on Kyiv. Pic: Reuters
Russia ‘dragging out the war’
Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continued a prisoner exchange, marking a rare moment of cooperation in the war.
Amid the most recent attacks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeated his calls for sanctions on Russia.
Russia “fills each day with horror and murder” and is “simply dragging out the war”, he said.
A resident looks at an apartment building that was damaged in a Russian drone strike. Pic: Reuters
“All of this demands a response – a strong response from the United States, from Europe, and from everyone in the world who wants this war to end,” Mr Zelenskyy added.
Every day “gives new grounds for sanctions against Russia”, he said, and each day without pressure proves the “war will continue”.
Ukraine, meanwhile, is ready for “any form of diplomacy that delivers real results”.
Nine of a doctor’s 10 children have been killed in an Israeli missile strike on their home in Gaza, which also left her surviving son badly injured and her husband in a critical condition.
Warning: This article contains details of child deaths
Alaa Al Najjar, a paediatrician at Al Tahrir Clinic in the Nasser Medical Complex, was at work during the attack on her home, south of the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, on Friday.
Graphic footage shared by the Hamas-run Palestinian Civil Defence shows the bodies of at least seven small children being pulled from the rubble.
Rescuers can be seen battling fires and searching through a collapsed building, shouting out when they locate a body, before bringing the children out one by one and wrapping their remains in body bags.
In the footage, Dr Al Najjar’s husband, Hamdi Al Najjar, who is also a doctor, is put on to a stretcher and then carried to an ambulance.
The oldest of their children was only 12 years old, according to Dr Muneer Alboursh, the director general of Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas.
Nine children were killed in the strike. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” he wrote in a social media post.
“In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted – Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”
Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
British doctors describe ‘horrific’ and ‘unimaginable’ attack
Two British doctors working at Nasser Hospital described the attack as “horrific” and “unimaginable” for Dr Al Najjar.
Speaking in a video diary on Friday night, Dr Graeme Groom said his last patient of the day was Dr Al Najjar’s 11-year-old son, who was badly injured and “seemed much younger as we lifted him on to the operating table”.
Hamdi Al Najjar, Dr Al Najjar’s husband who is also a doctor, was taken to hospital. Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
The strike “may or may not have been aimed at his father”, Dr Groom said, adding that the man had been left “very badly injured”.
Dr Victoria Rose said the family “lived opposite a petrol station, so I don’t know whether the bomb set off some massive fire”.
Pic: Palestinian Civil Defence
‘No political or military connections’
Dr Groom added: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here.
“The father was a physician at Nasser Hospital. He had no political and no military connections. He doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media, and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”
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Nineteen of Gaza’s hospitals remain operational, all of them are overwhelmed with the number of patients and a lack of supplies
He said it was “a particularly sad day”, while Dr Rose added: “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza.”
Sky News has approached the Israeli Defence Forces for comment.
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Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza began when the militant group stormed across the border into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 251 others.
Israel’s military response has flattened large areas of Gaza and killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
World
UN’s Antonio Guterres condemns ‘teaspoon’ of aid allowed into Gaza after dozens die in airstrikes
The head of the UN has said Israel has only authorised for Gaza what amounts to a “teaspoon” of aid after at least 60 people died in overnight airstrikes.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said on Friday the supplies approved so far “amounts to a teaspoon of aid when a flood of assistance is required,” adding “the needs are massive and the obstacles are staggering”.
He warned that more people will die unless there is “rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access”.
A woman at the site of an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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Gaza: ‘Loads of children with huge burns’
Israel says around 300 aid trucks have been allowed through since it lifted an 11-week blockade on Monday, but according to Mr Guterres, only about a third have been transported to warehouses within Gaza due to insecurity.
The IDF said 107 vehicles carrying flour, food, medical equipment and drugs were allowed through on Thursday.
Many of Gaza’s two million residents are at high risk of famine, experts have warned.
Meanwhile, at least 60 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes across Gaza overnight.
Ten people died in the southern city of Khan Younis, and deaths were also reported in the central town of Deir al-Balah and the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, according to the Nasser, Al-Aqsa and Al-Ahli hospitals where the bodies were brought.
A body is carried out of rubble after an Israeli strike in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
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‘Almost everyone depends on aid’ in Gaza
The latest strikes came a day after two Israeli embassy workers were killed in Washington.
The suspect, named as 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, Illinois, told police he “did it for Gaza”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney of fuelling antisemitism following the shootings.
The leaders of the UK, France and Canada are “on the wrong side of humanity and (…) history”, he said, after they threatened “concrete action” against Israel this week if it continues its “egregious” military operations in Gaza.
Mr Netanyahu also accused Sir Keir, Mr Macron and Mr Carney of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers”.
Palestinians search for casualties in Jabalia, northern Gaza. Pic: Reuters
But UK government minister Luke Pollard told Sky News on Friday morning he “doesn’t recognise” Mr Netanyahu’s accusation.
Earlier this week, Mr Netanyahu said he was recalling negotiators from the Qatari capital, Doha, after a week of ceasefire talks failed to bring results. A working team will remain.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251 others.
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The militants are still holding 58 captives, around a third of whom are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were returned in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s offensive, which has destroyed large swaths of Gaza, has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
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