MOSCOW, August 27. /TASS/. BRICS is not seeking to infringe upon anyone’s interests but only wants to develop its projects, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Sunday.

"We don’t want to encroach on anyone’s interests. We simply don’t want anyone to hamper the development of our mutually beneficial projects that are not aimed against anyone," he said in an interview with the Moscow.Krremlin.Putin program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.

When asked whether the expanded BRICS could some day become an alternative to the Group of Twenty, Lavrov said, "There is no need in this now."

The BRICS summit was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from August 22 to 24, 2023 and was chaired by South Africa. With the leaders of 54 African nations invited, this was the biggest meeting of the heads of state and government of the Global South in recent years. Participants in the summit agreed that Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates will join the association from January 1, 2024. A new list of possible members will be compiled by the next BRICS summit. According to South Africa’s Ambassador at Large for Asia and BRICS Affairs and BRICS Sherpa Anil Sooklal, around 30 countries are interested in joining the association and some of them have officially applied for membership.