BRICS 2025 without Xi and Putin

The 17th BRICS Summit will meet in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (July 06-07, 2025), most likely without the presence of the leaders of two founding nations: Russia and China. The group now accounts for 46% of global GDP and 55% of the world’s population, and more countries are clamouring for admission amidst global uncertainties and a quest for economic stability.

Suspicions of political turmoil in Beijing began when Chinese President Xi Jinping vanished from public between May 21 and June 05, 2025. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post stated that Premier Li Qiang will represent China at the summit, though it is yet to be officially confirmed. Beijing is said to have cited a scheduling conflict, but officials said the President has already met with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva twice in less than a year (at the G20 summit and state visit to Brasília in November 2024, and in May 2025 during the China-Celac forum in Beijing).

Anxious to ensure President Xi’s presence, President Lula’s special adviser for international affairs, Celso Amorim, met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing in February 2025 and mused that “Brics without China is not Brics.” Amorim recalled that then-president Hu Jintao had briefly attended the first Brics summit held in Brazil despite a major earthquake in China. He pointed out that with the United States leaving the Paris Agreement and the World Health Organization, major changes are taking place in the international system.

Kremlin Foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov announced in Moscow on June 25, 2025, that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will attend the summit while President Vladimir Putin will attend via video link (India Today). In 2023, President Putin did not attend the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, because of an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at Ukraine’s request. Brazil is also a signatory of the ICC’s Rome Statute and is therefore obliged to act on its warrants.

In the backdrop of continuing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, Palestine (with a pause in the military engagement between Israel and Iran), the BRICS summit aims to focus on ‘Strengthening Global South Cooperation for Inclusive and Sustainable Governance’. Only full members will participate in the discussion on reforming the global governance system.

Brazil is also hosting an official State visit for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will discuss strengthening strategic ties in trade, space, and health, with President Lula.

Brazil has set five goals for its presidency of BRICS. These include facilitating trade and investment: Promoting economic integration through the development of efficient payment systems; regulating artificial intelligence: promoting inclusive and responsible AI governance for development purposes; tackling climate change: improving financing mechanisms to support global efforts in coordination with the COP30 climate summit (Brazil November 2025); cooperation in the field of public health: strengthening cooperation projects between member countries with a focus on improving public health systems; and institutional development: strengthening the internal framework of BRICS to ensure effective governance and decision-making.

Russia had previously announced that Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Thailand, Uganda, and Uzbekistan were inducted as BRICS partners on January 01, 2025. In June 2025, Vietnam officially joined as the tenth partner country. President Lula has also invited Mexico, Columbia, and Uruguay to the summit. The entry of Venezuela was vetoed by Brazil, reportedly at Washington’s behest. This denied oil and gold-rich Venezuela access to the emerging global financial order based largely on trade in natural resources, and deprived it of relief from US sanctions.

In February 2025, President Xi stated “We would like to have Palestine become a BRICS member at some point in time.” Senegal is currently in talks to join Brics and ‘contribute its resources’ (Apr 12, 2025).

Nigeria was admitted as a partner country on January 17, 2025. This is a strategically important addition as Nigeria has vast amounts of  oil, gas, and critical raw materials, and is an attractive destination for trade and investment. Abuja hopes to access alternative sources of finance such as the BRICS-owned New Development Bank, aside from the West-dominated International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The BRICS group has gradually expanded its influence in Africa with Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, and South Africa as members or partners. Algeria and Uganda have applied to join the platform.

In January 2025, US President Trump decried attempts by BRICS countries to replace the dollar as a trading currency and warned that they would face 100% tariffs on their trade with the United States (here). He was threatening Russia and China which increasingly trade in their national currencies. Though national currencies have long been used in the past – for instance rupees and roubles between India and Russia – more and more countries wish to mitigate the dominance of the dollar, especially in oil and gas. President Trump is virulently opposed to the BRICS bloc’s commitment to a multipolar world order.

While BRICS has ruled out creating a new common currency, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it would focus on building new investment platforms. President Lula said Brazil would work to create secure payment systems for the Bloc (Feb 27, 2025). Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said most Russian partners now use national currencies for trade and investment, and are building SWIFT-FREE payment platforms.

William Huo, Intel’s first Chief Representative in Beijing, opines that 44 nations waiting in line  to join BRICS amounts to a mutiny against Bretton Woods 3.0, the order run by American and Anglo-Saxon neoliberal oligarchs. Huo explains that Bretton Woods 1.0 was the dollar-for-gold system, 2.0 was the post-Nixon petrodollar regime, and 3.0 is debt-based financial nihilism enforced by SWIFT, sanctions, and the ‘soft fascism’ of IMF reforms.

The system enables Washington to export inflation and hoard assets under the guise of a “rules-based order.” These “rules” benefit only the gatekeepers. Everyone else got austerity, coups, or both. The BRICS+ surge should bring down the system that pegs entire economies to a fiat currency printed by a country which is  $37 trillion in debt.

Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, Brazil are commodity kings with fast growing populations. Their gradual exit from the dollar-based regime could pose serious challenges to the United States. An alternative system that plays fair with all would help local currencies. With Blockchain, Gold, and Yuan-clearing, BRICS+ will build a parallel universe where the dollar is optional, not mandatory. Since the Greenback is no longer backed by oil or gold, it faces a real challenge. Huo calls this Post-Westphalia 2.0: The return of sovereign agency, not needing permission slips from the Fed, NATO, or the OECD.

China’s CIPS 2.0, powered by the digital yuan, covers 16 ASEAN and Middle Eastern countries so far. It completed a transaction of $16.5 million in 7.2 seconds, as opposed to SWIFT’s 3-days. Transaction fees fell from 4.95% to nearly zero, sharply reducing cross-border trade payment costs.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia has applied for membership of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), the fourth African member to do so after South Africa, Egypt, and Algeria. Its application has received political support from all existing BRICS members. Ethiopia’s Ambassador to Brazil, Leulseged Tadese Abebe, said joining the NDB is a top priority for 2025, and once the membership process is finalised, the country will focus on key sectors such as agriculture, energy, and industry to drive sustainable development.

The world order crafted after World War II is rapidly being refashioned by hitherto ‘subaltern peripheral’  nations.