MOSCOW, March 13. /TASS/. Russia, as the rotating chair of BRICS, will take up the work of compiling a list of the countries to be invited to the annual BRICS summit in Kazan after Russia’s presidential election, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, who serves as Russia’s sherpa for BRICS events, said in an interview for the premier issue of the TASS "BRICS Bulletin."

In answering a question about whether BRICS holdout Argentina would be invited to the upcoming summit in Kazan, Ryabkov stressed that, at the moment, the list of heads of state and government to be invited to the event is not ready yet. "And to do this, in my opinion, is not quite right, at least until the completion of the procedures related to the upcoming presidential election in Russia. This is not an attempt to evade the answer," the diplomat clarified. "We have not even sent invitations yet to the [other nine] BRICS countries [themselves] for those reasons. And we explained to them why this is not being done."

BRICS summit in Kazan

Russia assumed the one-year rotating chairmanship of the 10-member BRICS intergovernmental group on January 1, 2024. On Moscow’s watch, BRICS will carry out over 200 events covering a wide range of issues. The key event of Russia’s chairmanship will be the BRICS summit in October 2024 in Kazan, Tatarstan, in Russia’s Volga region.