BRICS Confer on Security Matters, Including Security from the Financial System

In preparation for the BRICS summit to be held on Oct. 22-24 in Kazan, high-level officials responsible for security matters of the member countries gathered in St. Petersburg Sept. 11-12. In addition to those nine members (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, United Arab Emirates), a meeting also took place with representatives of countries that are working closely with the group, as well as many important bilateral talks..

Just days later, high-level media representatives of the BRICS met in Moscow starting Sept. 14, while their Energy Ministers will get together there on Sept. 26-28, and the Foreign Ministers are expected to meet in late September in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

At the security meetings, cooperation in the fight against terrorism, extremism, cross-border crime and illegal trafficking of weapons and drugs were on the agenda. Another very important aspect of national and international security was raised publicly by Sergei Shoigu, Secretary of the Russian Security Council, in an interview to Russian media during the conference: financial security. Governments, he explained, “realize that they need to go away from the U.S.-dependent financial system. There is a need for a structure that would not be so monopolized and dependent on U.S. domestic laws.”

Alone the fact that the U.S. and EU have frozen (stolen) $300 billion in Russian reserves held in Western banks shows, in his view, that “the world should move away from the dollar”. The BRICS is different, he said: “Here we don’t have some hegemonic power towering over everyone and dictating terms, as this happens in the EU and NATO.”

Underscoring the importance of the event, China sent its Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who met with Russian President Putin and Sergei Shoigu on the sidelines. Of special note is the discussion Wang had with Brazil’s Celso Amorim, President Lula’s special foreign policy advisor. As reported by Xinhua, the Foreign Minister stressed that China seeks to strengthen strategic cooperation and mutual political trust with Brazil, and to elevate bilateral ties to a “new high”. The two certainly discussed the Sino-Brazilian peace plan for Ukraine, that was proposed in May 2024 (cf. SAS 23/24), and has been endorsed since then by 26 countries. According to the South China Morning Post, Shoigu has welcomed the peace initiative and its international recognition. (President Zelenskyy, however, has just made a point of declaring the plan “destructive”.)