MOSCOW, April 11. /TASS/. The BRICS organization espouses the values of the entire non-Western world, namely that the voice of each country is important and that all states have the right to choose how they grow and develop, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"I can say without exaggeration that BRICS today acts as a mouthpiece for the interests of the entire non-Western world," Lavrov said at a meeting with legislators from BRICS states’ parliamentary committees on international affairs.
According to him, Russia sees the growing interest from countries of the global South in the association as logical and natural. "The point, perhaps, is that our association is not trying to reverse natural historical processes, in this case - poly-centricity that is taking shape. On the contrary, it seeks to promote these processes in every possible way, to head these processes, if you will, but doing this not in its self-serving interests, but in the interests of all member countries, as well as those countries that want to interact with BRICS," Lavrov said.
He emphasized that BRICS is founded on the principles of "equal dialogue, respect for each country's choice to its own development path, consideration for each other's interests and focus on the collective search for solutions to all problems of our time."
The BRICS group of nations has seen two waves of expansion since it was founded in 2006. In 2011, South Africa joined the initial group, which included Brazil, Russia, India and China. In August 2023, six new members were invited to join the association at once, but Argentina declined to join at the end of December. The five new members of the group - Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia - began full-fledged work in BRICS on January 1, 2024.