MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/. Russia has invited 36 foreign leaders to attend the BRICS summit in Kazan on October 22-24, and 18 of them have already accepted the invitation, Russian presidential aide for international affairs Yury Ushakov said.
"We have gone to Kazan for an inspection and are generally satisfied with how the city is preparing [for the summit]. Indeed, preparations are serious because the event will be unprecedented in terms of its scale. We have not organized such a large-scale international event in quite a long time. Thirty-six leaders from various countries have been invited," he said. "Eighteen of them have already confirmed their participation."
According to the Kremlin aide, along with the leaders of the nine member states, invitations were sent to the leaders of the CIS countries, countries holding the presidency in influential regional integration associations in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and southeast Asia, as well as of many countries seeking to become members or collaborate with BRICS.
This year, in his words, is very important for Russia’s presidency. "For the first time, we are presiding over an extended format, which includes not just five but actually nine BRICS countries. We are working on one key task, i.e. a new format for BRICS partner states," Ushakov noted. "We have some two months and plan to hold another meeting of the organizing committee. Naturally, we will visit Kazan. I hope we will be 100-percent ready to host this large-scale event."
Ushakov, who chairs the organizing committee for the BRICS summit in Kazan, said that the committee’s latest meeting took place on August 21 to sum up the results of Russia’s presidency in the past six months. "More than 60% of scheduled events have been implemented. Some 140 events were held in 13 Russian cities and abroad. The largest of them were the BRICS Parliamentary Forum, BRICS Interparty Forum, meetings of the BRICS education, sports, and transport ministers, prosecution services, supreme courts chairmen, audit services. The keystone event of our presidency was a meeting of the BRICS foreign ministers and BRICS+ session on its sidelines, which was attended by delegates from countries of the global South and East. This meeting was held in Nizhny Novgorod on June 10 and 11," he said.
"We think that the launch of new cooperation formats can be seen as a major achievement of our presidency. Thus, the first meetings of the BRICS transport ministers and chief of geological services, as well as the first BRICS forum on nuclear medicine were organized. Cultural and humanitarian areas of cooperation are also developing," he added.