Putin relishes role on stage, but Ukraine war looms over BRICS summit

With the hosting of the annual BRICS summit fortuitously falling on Russia’s shoulders this year, President Vladimir Putin has been handed an opportunity to flaunt his nation’s standing on the world stage, despite Western efforts to ostracize him since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The three-day summit is the largest geopolitical event in Russia since the war and saw the first formal talks between the estranged leaders of China and India in five years, as well as discussions on alternative global financial systems — but there was little focus on the war in Ukraine, one of the world’s biggest ongoing crises.

Leaders and delegations from 36 nations descended on Kazan, one of Russia’s largest and most affluent cities, to discuss their grievances about widely perceived Western hypocrisy over the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and the dysfunction of the global institutions created since World War II.

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