On September 12–13, the 18th BRICS Summit will be held in New Delhi.
All leaders of member states have been invited to the Indian capital, along with partner countries, including the Republic of Belarus.
The following key topics are likely to be of particular interest to our country’s national interests at the summit.
De-dollarisation. Member countries have long been seeking ways and means to enhance the security of mutual settlements and reduce excessive dependence on a single financial channel.
Central bank digital currencies of BRICS member states as an element of new geoeconomic infrastructure for more convenient and secure cross-border payments (according to some Russian experts, they have become an instrument of a “new war” waged by the West). India is actively promoting wider adoption of such currencies and greater intra-BRICS interoperability of financial systems. However, full isolation from the current model is not the goal; the primary objective is enhanced resilience.
Increased lending in national currencies for infrastructure projects and sustainable development initiatives is intended to strengthen the role of the New Development Bank of BRICS.
Closer coordination in supply chains, critical minerals, energy and food security, and industrial cooperation could move BRICS beyond declarative diplomacy. Yet transforming these ambitions into common policy remains a complex challenge.
Considerable attention will also be paid to cooperation among small and medium-sized enterprises. SMEs are seen as drivers of trade and economic cooperation due to their greater flexibility—a factor equally relevant to Belarusian–Indian relations.
One of India’s notable achievements has been advancing the BRICS Economic Partnership Strategy towards 2030.
In the 21st century, geopolitical competition is increasingly conducted through technology. This makes technological collaboration within BRICS critically important. Technology is becoming a new “currency,” while artificial intelligence defines strategic competitiveness.
India intends to propose a mechanism for expedited search and extradition of individuals accused of major financial crimes (exchange of investigative and financial information, direct interaction between competent authorities in tracing, freezing, and repatriating assets transferred abroad).
At the same time, against the backdrop of a packed agenda and ceremonial protocol, India—as the current (and fourth-time) BRICS chair—faces a structural challenge: not merely to host a high-level meeting, but to bring together countries whose interests and unity have recently diverged ever more noticeably. Seated at one table must be strategic competitors, energy partners, sanctioned states, regional rivals, developing nations, and leading industrial powers—all with differing relationships with the United States and the Western world as a whole.
Nevertheless, some experts argue that this very “unity and struggle of opposites” may well constitute the true essence and binding force of the grouping—as does its deficit of institutionalisation, where flexibility serves as both an advantage and a vulnerability.
Recent enlargement has expanded BRICS’ strategic reach but has also complicated consensus-building and diluted institutional cohesion amid the difficult process of “socialising” new members. The Middle East conflict has most starkly highlighted this dilemma: bloc members are drawn into its orbit, including as opposing parties. Hence another challenge—to make BRICS more functional, for instance by creating space for managed competition. Resolving this issue need not entail eliminating all disagreements; rather, it may lie in preventing irreversible fragmentation.
In international politics, averting further deterioration is itself considered a diplomatic achievement. The greatest geopolitical risk and challenge lies in the potential transformation of BRICS into an amorphous platform lacking a shared strategic vision.
Thus, India’s BRICS chairmanship falls during a highly complex transitional period. It is hosting not just another summit of the grouping, but subjecting multipolarity and strategic balancing to a kind of “stress test.”
Multipolarity does not automatically imply a more peaceful objective reality or universal consensus. Strategists in New Delhi see their main task as converting BRICS’ nominally increased geopolitical weight into effective economic cooperation. Member states are hardly short of ambitions or ideas; yet most suffer from difficulties in practical implementation and coordinated action. The optimal way forward may be the principle of selective functionality—whereby members do not seek absolute compromise but actively cooperate in areas of shared or overlapping interests.
India’s principal gains will be diplomatic and reputational in nature. Its BRICS chairmanship represents a long-term strategic investment by New Delhi in strengthening its position within the emerging global order. Success will demonstrate the compatibility of strategic autonomy with effective multilateralism, while reinforcing India’s claim to represent the broader Global South within the grouping.
We expect Belarus’s voice at the New Delhi summit to resonate with its traditionally proactive and innovative stance, despite its partner-country status—and no less clearly, distinctly, and emphatically than recently in Bishkek, when a call (essentially a heartfelt plea) regarding the shortage of breakthrough initiatives was addressed to the leaders of Russia, India, and China (the RIC format)—the core of both the SCO and BRICS. The quality of relations among these countries, as the nucleus of an alternative geoeconomic centre, is decisive for the success of both groupings. Steady progress in New Delhi’s ties with Moscow, coupled with continued détente with Beijing, has created favourable conditions for consolidating the “nested geometry” of RIC–SCO–BRICS and its political “capitalisation.” This fully aligns with the Head of State’s thesis on the “integration of integrations.”
Clearly, the BRICS and SCO platforms—which unite (as commonly believed) countries of the Global Majority—have now matured sufficiently to move from general political declarations to concrete practical steps and play a more active role in shaping the new world order.
Even amid divergent geopolitical interests among member states, the “BRICS spirit,” intermingling with the “Shanghai spirit,” already de facto outlines the contours of a changing global reality. Accordingly, much in the final declaration of the 18th BRICS meeting—with certain qualifications (given New Delhi’s efforts to avoid a narrative of “confrontation with the West”)—is likely to serve as a kind of message to the December G20 Summit in Miami.
