MOSCOW, August 21. /TASS/. BRICS’ Johannesburg summit to offer counterforce to heavy-handed US diktat; highlights and key takeaways from Army-2023 forum and expo; and renewed grain deal prospects get Turkic twist in Hungary talks. These stories topped Monday’s newspaper headlines across Russia.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta: BRICS summit to highlight striving for liberation from Western diktat
Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend the BRICS summit in South Africa, Beijing announced. Following the meeting, he and his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, will chair a discussion with African leaders. Russian President Vladimir Putin will participate in the summit via video link.
The BRICS group’s prestige has grown; about 20 countries now have applications pending to join the organization. However, the differences of opinion between China and India, as well as Brazil, preclude a quick resolution to the issue of accepting new members.
The Global South will be carefully monitoring the summit, hoping that BRICS can, at least partially, patch over some of the holes punched in the edifice of global governance by the heavy-handed, do-it-our-way-or-else approach of the United States. While the economies of developing markets have suffered, first from the pandemic and then from the Ukrainian conflict, any support from Washington has been minimal and cosmetic at best. On the contrary, the US has aggressively raised interest rates, thus exacerbating stresses in the global economy, said Sarang Shidore of the Quincy Institute in Washington.
Oliver Stuenkel of Brazil’s Fundacao Getulio Vargas Institute said that the summit gives Russia the opportunity to show that it is not isolated in the world. In this respect, China has all the advantages. It has no fear of losing its clout in the organization if it pursues expansion. On the contrary, expansion of BRICS would help Beijing promote its Belt and Road Initiative projects. However, the potential expansion of the group has set off alarms for Brazil and India, which are proud of BRICS’ exclusive nature. The logic of these two countries is obvious, Stuenkel said, adding that being a member of an exclusive club, one does not want the club to be open to all comers.
In a conversation with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Alexander Lukin, research director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, noted: "BRICS is important for China. It is positioning itself as a leader of the Global South. In this group, China is the strongest country from an economics point of view. That said, though, one cannot say that China is the leader, as there [within BRICS] each [member] country is preoccupied with its own prestige. As for China’s dialogue with African countries, this is above all about economic interests. China needs raw materials and Africa has a lot of them. China needs markets for its goods. It also needs investment projects, in particular for investing in infrastructure. China has a lot of companies building railroads, airports, seaports. In China itself, by now there is almost no room for such companies to use their expertise, but their capacities remain and should be applied somewhere, so now China is boosting construction of infrastructure facilities in Africa. At the same time, building ports facilitates importing oil from Africa. This is a mutually beneficial process."
Izvestia: Army-2023 forum highlights and future of key international defense sector event
Some 83 foreign companies exhibited at the Army-2023 International Military-Technical Forum outside Moscow, which was twice as many as at last year’s event. The main takeaway was that the West did not succeed in attempts to isolate Russia’s military-industrial complex, experts said. At the forum, the Russian Defense Ministry signed contracts to the tune of over 400 bln rubles (more than $4.3 bln) with Russian enterprises, which will result in the army receiving 2,500 new units of armaments, military and special hardware, as well as over 1.8 mln units of ordnance. The exhibit of various types of Western arms captured as trophies during the special military operation was particularly popular among attendees.
It is a critical factor that numerous foreign delegations and arms manufacturers took part in the Army-2023 forum, military expert Andrey Frolov told Izvestia. "This vividly showed that Russia is not isolated or under siege," he noted. "A lot of interesting things were brought from China and Iran, and from the latter [there were] a lot of full-scale replicas. The Chinese, above all, arrived with a program for drones; several [Chinese drone] companies had stands to exhibit their products. A lot of contracts were concluded at the forum. Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport announced that one contract alone was worth $500 mln, which means that the exhibit was successful as well from the point of view of international military and technical cooperation," the expert explained.
He reiterated that quite a few new products that had been anticipated for some time were presented at the forum, also noting that many small developers were present at the exposition. "Many of them presented, for example, their versions of tactical vehicles. We’ll see if they manage to conclude contracts with the Defense Ministry for actual deliveries of their hardware," Frolov concluded.
Vedomosti: Renewed grain deal prospects get Turkic twist in Hungary talks
On August 20, Hungary marked St. Stephen’s Day, also known as Foundation Day, the country’s official national holiday. Prime Minister Viktor Orban hosted a number of high-level foreign guests, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Russia was represented by Rustam Minnikhanov, head of the Republic of Tatarstan. The TRT TV channel said, citing sources in Erdogan’s administration, that the agenda for the Minnikhanov-Orban meeting was to focus on settling the Ukrainian crisis and developing a roadmap for ensuring security in the Black Sea following the demise of the grain deal. The head of Tatarstan had previously visited Hungary in 2016.
Kirill Teremetsky, an expert at the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies (CCEIS) at the Higher School of Economics (HSE University), pointed out that Hungary has strong ties with Tatarstan. Budapest has repeatedly stated its intention to continue fostering constructive relations with this key Russian region, for example by providing scholarships to local students. The Hungarians are interested both in working with Turkic nations in the Organization of Turkic States (where Budapest has observer status) and via the de-facto triad of Turkey-Hungary-Tatarstan, the expert added.
In his opinion, Orban would be pleased to have Budapest serve as a venue for discussing peace initiatives on Ukraine, for which the head of Tatarstan could serve as conduit for the Russian side. That said, however, the US and many EU countries are most likely less than thrilled about such talks, the expert added. Minnikhanov is not authorized to sign any agreements on behalf of Russia but some important information could be conveyed through him as an important political figure, Teremetsky explained.
Most likely, Minnikhanov received some instructions in Russia and indeed held talks while in Hungary, including on the grain deal, says Russian International Affairs Council expert Kirill Semyonov. This may be one of the preliminary steps for reaching a new agreement, he thinks, including in advance of the potential meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Erdogan. This way, Minnikhanov can present Russia’s position more clearly while giving a hearing to the Turkish position in order to seek ways to reach a compromise, the expert thinks.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Nigerien rebels seek distance from association with Russia, Wagner
Talks between a delegation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Niger rebels who overthrew the country’s president have failed. According to media reports, the rebels refused to immediately reinstate democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, who was ousted in the coup, thus heightening the possibility of a military intervention by ECOWAS in Niger. For Moscow, it is notable that the rebels for the first time publicly disassociated themselves from Russia and the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC), assuring Western capitals that they were ready for political and economic cooperation with the West.
Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine, the rebels’ designated prime minister, gave an interview to the New York Times (published on August 18), where he outlined the foreign policy priorities of Niger’s new government. In particular, he completely refuted speculation that Moscow was behind the coup. "I have seen no intention" on the part of Niger’s military rulers to collaborate with Russia or the Wagner group, Zeine said. In the interview, he slightly rebuked unnamed forces who "push" the country to cooperation with those the West does not want to see in Africa. Zeine clearly stated that Niger’s pro-Paris foreign policy will remain even with the new government. "We were trained in French universities, our officers were trained in France," he said. According to the interview, the only thing the rebels are after is revisiting the terms of cooperation with Niger’s former colonial metropolis. According to Zeine, "We just want to be respected." Possibly, this means reviewing the terms for uranium and gold mining in the country, activities which are currently suspended.
Whether France is ready to make concessions to Niger’s new authorities remains open to question. Nevertheless, war preparations are already underway. ECOWAS insists that the date when its member states’ joint troop contingent will enter Niger has already been determined. On Sunday, the UK embassy announced the evacuation of its staff from Niamey, the Nigerien capital, which can be interpreted as a harbinger of upcoming violence. However, the author of the Zangaro Today Telegram channel on Africa, Alexey Tselunov, in a conversation with Nezavisimaya Gazeta, cautioned against any rush to make conclusions. He noted that, so far, all interested parties have been avoiding providing direct information about their intentions, so one cannot make predictions whether the intervention will happen or not. "One can only definitely say that the junta has a minimal set of concessions they are ready for in order to ‘save face.’ This is, above all, freeing Bazoum, naturally, followed by his departure from the country, of course, if he agrees to leave," Tselunov said.
Izvestia: How Luna-25 accident will affect Russian lunar programs
The crash of the Luna-25 lunar module may have been triggered by glitches in the mission’s software support, two sources in the space industry told Izvestia. The incorrect force of the impulse set to transfer the apparatus to a pre-landing orbit was cited as the preliminary cause of the incident that caused the module to crash on the Moon’s surface.
Experts think that, for the further development of Russia’s space program, it is extremely important to objectively sort out the causes of the accident and take effective measures to avoid their repetition in the future.
"This is not a failure; it is simply necessary to continue working. If a flight apparatus that is ready to a certain extent is available, the mission should be repeated. If this is not possible, then research not performed with Luna-25 should be transferred to the expeditions that follow," Ilya Ovchinnikov, author of a Telegram channel on space exploration, said.
He explained that the next mission, Luna-26, will work on the lunar orbit in 2027, conducting a distant probing of the Moon’s surface. Then, in 2028, a Russian moon rover will work on the Earth’s natural satellite’s surface within the framework of the Luna-27 mission.
The expert stressed that the Luna-25 mission was not useless. For instance, the module conducted a set of measurements on the lunar orbit, including measuring the gamma-rays and neutron flows from the Moon’s surface and obtaining the parameters of space plasma and gas and dust exosphere near the Moon.
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