This summer’s summit parade will continue with the BRICS summit, which will take place in Johannesburg from August 22nd to 24th. The President of South Africa has invited the leaders of 67 countries and 20 representatives of organizations to meetings within the framework of the BRICS summit. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of South Africa has also approved a list of 23 countries that have applied for BRICS membership. They have also received invitations to participate in the summit. All leaders of BRICS countries will personally participate in the organization’s summit in South Africa, except for the Russian president. Putin is the only one who will participate in the summit online. The Russian delegation is headed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov. The Russian president will not attend the BRICS summit because the South African authorities have an obligation to arrest him on their territory. For Russia, this is a powerful reputational blow and a transition to the stage of realization and acceptance of the inevitable — international isolation.
In an attempt to prove the absence of international isolation, Russia strives for active participation in various summits. It wants to turn BRICS into an anti-Western coalition, but this clashes with the interests of other alliance members. BRICS countries are closely linked to the West economically, while Russia has effectively become an outcast. Economic cooperation with Russia is toxic for the world’s leading economies. Moscow significantly lags behind other BRICS members in economic potential and cannot claim a leadership role. The time when Russian authorities had authority in the civilized world has irreversibly passed. Sanctions are gradually killing the Russian economy. Moscow is trying in every way to mitigate the consequences of sanctions. Moscow is so cut off from the global financial system that even the New Development Bank, or the so-called BRICS Bank, created by member countries, has refused «toxic» investments in Russia: there will be no new BRICS bank projects with Moscow. The project of a «BRICS single currency,» which Moscow actively promoted, promising to end the dominance of the dollar, is unlikely to be implemented in the near future. The Kremlin had to acknowledge the failure of the project, which it lobbied for more than other allies. India has publicly refused to support the BRICS common currency. South Africa has reported that the issue of a common currency is not on the agenda, and alliance countries only talk about deepening mutual trade in national currencies. The BRICS single currency turned out to be necessary only for Russia. The reason is simple: such a currency was needed to bypass sanctions, which are becoming more painful every day, and their effects are irreversible for the Russian economy.
Russian aggression against Ukraine has provoked an intensification of depressive trends in many countries worldwide, significantly impacting the global economy by slowing down its growth rates and accelerating inflationary processes. The catastrophic consequences of Vladimir Putin’s foreign and economic policies are too evident to hide. Recent events show that even «friendly» countries and partners in the BRICS format, including Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, are fundamentally changing their views on cooperation with Russia. Russia and its leader are currently in global isolation. This country has become too toxic to deal with.