BRICS Post-Kazan: A Laboratory of the Future
The Russian presidency of BRICS 2024 could not have chosen a more multicultural and multi-nodal site to host a summit laden with enormous expectations by the Global Majority. The southwestern Russian city of Kazan, on the banks of the Volga and Kazanka rivers, is the capital of the semi-autonomous Republic of Tatarstan, renowned for its vibrant mix of Tatar and Russian cultures.
Even though the BRICS summit took place in the Kazan Expo – a sort of multi-level station connected to the airport and the aero-express link to the city – it was the Kazan Kremlin, a centuries-old fortified citadel and World Heritage Site, that imposed itself as the global image of BRICS 2024.
That spelled out, graphically, a continuity from the 10th century onwards through Bulgar culture, the Golden Horde, and the 15th–16th-century Khanate all the way to modern Tatarstan.
The Kazan Kremlin is the last Tatar fortress in Russia with remnants of its original town planning. The global Muslim Ummah did not fail to observe that this is the northwestern limit of the spread of Islam in Russia. The minarets of the Kul Sharif mosque in the Kremlin, in fact, acquired an iconic dimension – symbolizing a collective, trans-cultural, civilization-state effort to build a more equitable and just world.
It has been an extraordinary experience to follow throughout the year how Russian diplomacy managed to successfully bring together delegations from 36 nations – 22 of them represented by heads of state – plus six international organizations, including the United Nations, for the summit in Kazan.
These delegations came from nations representing nearly half of the global GDP. The implication is that a tsunami of thousands of sanctions imposed since 2022, plus relentless yelling about Russia’s “isolation,” simply disappeared in the vortex of irrelevance. That contributed to the immense irritation displayed by the collective west over this remarkable gathering. Key subtext: there was not a single official presence of the Five Eyes set-up in Kazan.
The various devils, of course, remain in the various details: how BRICS – and the BRICS Outreach mechanism, housing 13 new partners – will move from the extremely polite and quite detailed Kazan Declaration – with more than 130 operational paragraphs – and several other white papers to implement a Global Majority-oriented platform ranging from collective security to widespread connectivity, non-weaponized trade settlements, and geopolitical primacy. It will be a long, winding, and thorny road.
Onward drive, from Asia to the Muslim world
The BRICS Outreach session was one of the astonishing highlights of Kazan: a big round table re-enacting the post-colonial Bandung 1955 landmark on steroids, with Russian President Vladimir Putin opening the proceedings and then handing the flo
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