RIYADH, September 9. /TASS/. A large package of documents will be preparade for the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"BRICS is developing upwardly and this trend will only strengthen. Russia’s presidency is doing its best to promote this," he said after a meeting of the Russia-Gulf Cooperation Council Strategic Dialogue.
He recalled that Russia plans more than a hundred various BRICS events throughout its presidency. "A large package of documents will be prepared for the summit," he stressed.
According to the top Russian diplomat, it is planned to formulate criteria for partner countries. "The countries that will be granted this status ill be maximally involved practically in all BRICS events," Lavrov explained.
"As for more new members, there are quite a lot of such applications but decisions are made by consensus. We think that many of these applications deserve thorough scrutiny and, let me repeat, this will ne discussed by the heads of state. Moreover, a BRICS ministerial meeting will be held in New York, during the United Nations General Assembly and we will consider preliminary proposals on this matter drafted by our Sherpas," he said.
Established in 2006, the BRIC group was made up of Brazil, Russia, India and China. In 2011, South Africa joined the group, adding the "S" to the acronym. Now it has ten members after six new countries, including Argentina, were invited to join the association in August 2023, but Argentina refused from joining BRICS in late December, while the other five nations, namely Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia, became full-fledged members of BRICS from January 1, 2024.
Russia took over the BRICS’ year-long presidency on January 1, 2024. Russia’s presidency features more than 250 various events, with a BRICS summit in Kazan in October 2024 being the central one.