For three uninterrupted days this week, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, basked in the attention of other world leaders in the picturesque Russian city of Kazan, along the banks of the Volga River.
He beamed as he clinked a champagne flute with visiting heads of state at a gala dinner. He stood proudly beside the powerful leaders of China and India, who chose his country to hold their own first official meeting in more than five years. And he held court at round table discussions during which he pronounced that the West is facing an irreversible process of decline.
Elsewhere in the world, Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine was raging toward year three. Western officials expressed alarm that North Korean soldiers were present in Russia, which Mr. Putin appeared to tacitly confirm. Israel seemed poised to retaliate against Iran as the threat of a wider war in the Middle East loomed.
And the eyes of the world were turning toward an American presidential election in less than two weeks that could drastically alter global security.
Little of that penetrated the bubble Mr. Putin created around his gathering, a meeting of emerging market countries. The summit — known by the acronym BRICS — had the feel of an alternate reality.
Surrounded by mostly like-minded leaders, compliant state media and pro-Kremlin bloggers, Mr. Putin positioned himself as the respected head of an important power helping to forge a more equal world order.
Never mind that Mr. Putin cannot travel abroad freely because of a warrant for his arrest from the International Criminal Court. The steady procession of leaders, and the presence of the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, granted him something that has eluded him since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022: a sense of normalcy.
“The BRICS summit was a carefully created parallel universe, a version of the universe which Russia is trying to create because it was excluded from the existing global order,” said Alexandra Prokopenko of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
The challenges of the war in Ukraine, highlighted by Russia’s need for manpower from North Korea, barely received a mention. Instead, the gathering’s final communiqué delivered scathing criticism of the West’s handling of the crisis in the Middle East.
Traffic in Kazan was at a standstill as delegations descended on the city of more than 1 million people, mostly for meetings at a gargantuan convention center adjacent to the city’s international airport.
The atmosphere was upbeat as the leaders toe tapped during a concert of traditional Russian music, and Mr. Modi gave a thumbs up as Mr. Xi cracked a smile during a conversation with Mr. Putin. Organizers said 35 states and six international organizations were represented. Every continent besides North America is now represented in BRICS.
Still, Russia’s isolation since the war in Ukraine hung over the event. Organizers had taken pains to inform participants that non-Russian bank cards would not work inside the country, and suggested that they bring U.S. dollars — the very currency whose dominance Mr. Putin has complained about — or euros instead.
By the time the last delegation had left what turned out to be the largest international gathering in Russia since the start of the war, many of Mr. Putin’s difficult issues remained the same, if not worse.
Russia’s challenges in financing Mr. Putin’s war became even more apparent on Friday when its central bank raised the key interest rate to 21 percent, the highest in years. The addition of troops from the rogue nuclear state of North Korea underscored Moscow’s need for more manpower to sustain its war of attrition in Ukraine.
The need for North Korean assistance puts Mr. Putin in an uncomfortable diplomatic position with his chief benefactor, President Xi Jinping of China. Mr. Xi has called on countries not to add “oil to the fire” in Ukraine. And Beijing is likely worried that any development that emboldens the mercurial regime in Pyongyang, like growing ties with Moscow, could destabilize its border along the Korean Peninsula.
That sense of unease, in contrast to the triumphant mood in Kazan, also extended to other BRICS members such as Iran, which is girding for a retaliatory strike from Israel for its own missile barrage earlier this month.
And despite expressions of good will at the summit, there remained no indication that BRICS was any closer to bridging the differences between countries like China and Russia, which want to confront the U.S.-led order, and others like India and Brazil, which want to reform it.
“We must be careful to ensure that this organization does not acquire the image of one that is trying to replace global institutions, instead of being perceived as one that wishes to reform them,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India said during one of the plenary sessions.
That remains one of the central tensions of BRICS, and one that Mr. Putin takes seriously as he tries to forge closer ties with Delhi and Beijing. Those stumbling blocks prevent the group from becoming a global heavyweight, at least for now.
“I would not dismiss it as all optics, but neither would I say that this is an alliance in the making or an alternative geopolitical power center at present,” said Manoj Kewalramani, head of Indo-Pacific studies at the Takshashila Institution research center in Bangalore, India. “Member states and the new partner countries have very different interests and are engaging for pragmatic benefit rather than an ideological commitment.”
Still, Mr. Kewalramani said that some of the proposals on the table showed that there was a strong interest in meeting the needs of developing countries, like financial support from the development bank and grain and commodities exchanges Mr. Putin proposed this week.
The group may well grow from a forum for emerging markets into an institution, but that will take time that Mr. Putin likely does not have, said Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of R.Politik, a political analysis firm.
“Today, BRICS cannot be an instrument for advancing Russia’s interests in the context of the Ukraine crisis,” she said in a phone interview. While Beijing has thrown Moscow an economic lifeline, the grouping is divided in its views on the war and limited in the support it is providing.
Though Mr. Putin is finally seeing the rise of a grouping of non-Western countries, something that he has wanted for a long time, “he can’t use it now,” Ms. Stanovaya said.
“Maybe BRICS will become something in the next 12 or 15 years,” she said. “But where will Putin be, and where will Ukraine be by then?”
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