MOSCOW, July 3. /TASS/. The BRICS association comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is a powerful factor deterring the dictatorial ambitions in today’s world, speaker of Russia’s State Duma Sergey Naryshkin told the Xinhua news agency. The interview has been posted on the agency's website in Russian.

According to the speaker, the mere emergence and development of BRICS "has become an unpleasant challenge for those who would like the world to be unipolar." "From the very beginning there were external attempts to undermine the process of strengthening of our association," he said. "But, fortunately, something different happened. BRIC turned into BRICS, expanded and became stronger, acquired new friends, supporters and scopes of activity."

Naryshkin noted that BRICS was one of the "powerful factors, which contain and do not allow to implement the dictatorial ambitions in the modern world." "This is a model of equitable cooperation devoid of the bloc mentality. Unlike our opponents, we do not impose our perceptions on anyone," he said, adding that this was one of the reasons why "our common position was gaining increasingly greater support."

The State Duma speaker said that cooperation of the BRICS countries in other international organizations didn’t allow to turn them into "a tool for exerting pressure" on other countries. "We invite all countries, while maintaining their traditions, respecting history and the right to the vision of their own destiny, to take part in building our common future," Naryshkin said.

BRICS, the association of five countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), was founded in June 2006 within the framework of the St.Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). At that time it was called BRIC, with South Africa joining the association in 2009. Russia holds the BRICS chairmanship in 2015. During the association’s summit in 2014 the BRICS countries signed an agreement on establishing the New Development Bank (NDB) to fund infrastructure and sustainable development projects in the BRICS member-states and developing countries.