Inside the big summit where Putin hopes to defy Western pressure on the war in Ukraine

KAZAN, Russia — Nearly 700 miles east of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the city of Kazan is a safe enough distance for President Vladimir Putin to try to reposition himself as an international ambassador.

In the center opposite the Kazan Kremlin, a historic castle, Russian state media are setting up broadcast stages to amplify three days of meetings as world leaders from a group known as the BRICS gather in the city for their annual summit.

The bloc represents 41.1% of the world’s population and 37.3% of gross domestic product and aims to counterbalance US-led Western alliances; The three-day event will allow Putin to stand shoulder to shoulder with Russia’s global allies and counter predictions that the war in Ukraine and an international arrest warrant would make him a pariah.

The Kremlin calls it one of the “biggest foreign policy events ever” in Russia.

Among those recruited to staff the rally in the city east of Moscow is 18-year-old student Islam Gavrilov, who said his father, Sergei Gavrilov, 46, “died in the trenches” in Ukraine on Oct. 1 2022.

“He got shrapnel in his hip and bled to death because the hospital was very far away,” he told NBC News on Monday.

With a warm smile, Gavrilov said he was surprised that American media attended the BRICS conference. He wore NASA sweatpants with an American flag on them and showed his phone screensaver with a Harvard University motif.

His “dream” is to study in America, he said, adding that his mother did not want him to go because she thought the US was a “bad place.”

Despite his personal loss, he said Putin was “more or less right” when he made the decision to invade Ukraine more than two and a half years ago, in February 2022. He remains a staunch supporter of his leader and says he is a member of the Movement of the First, a pro-Putin youth group.

The countries gathering for the BRICS summit, where Gavrilov is helping to guide delegates, share a similar mix of seemingly contradictory positions.

The group’s acronym comes from its first five members – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – but Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates were allowed to join earlier this year.

Together they represent a larger share of the world’s population and GDP than the European Union or the G7, the organization formed by seven of the world’s largest industrialized countries. said the European Parliament.

Russia holds the rotating presidency and will hope this year’s summit will allow the country to strike deals with major players like India and China to support its economy and war efforts by expanding trade and sidestepping Western sanctions.

For the other participants it is a chance to amplify their voices, although it is a growing mix of countries with deep ideological divisions and alliances that rarely agree with each other, and some have criticized Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Careful choreography will try to hide some of these fissures.

Russia and Iranian protocol teams huddled in a hotel in Kazan on Sunday to plan the arrival of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

On the same day, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the UAE and a close US partner, met with President Putin at his residence in a Moscow suburb for talks that lasted until midnight.

In a statement to NBC News on Monday, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, said his country is “committed to promoting dialogue and international cooperation through multilateral platforms, including the BRICS .”

On Monday evening, the Kremlin announced a plan that would allow the UAE leader to leave Russia before the Iranian president’s meeting with Putin on Wednesday.

Leaders from 15 other non-member states will also attend the three-day summit in Kazan, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a US ally who signed up to join the bloc in September.

However, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has decided not to attend in person and has instead sent his Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva canceled his trip after a fall at home caused a minor brain hemorrhage.

A number of other countries have expressed a desire to join the bloc which, since its formation in 2006, has shaped itself as an alternative to the US-dominated G7 and other Western-led international groups, and is an important platform for the development of developing countries. countries in the South that have long complained that they have been abandoned.

“BRICS is organizationally disjointed,” David Lubin, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, told NBC News in a telephone interview on Monday. “If you put India and China at the same table, you won’t find much agreement on anything.”

However, he said developing countries are “fed up” with US financial hegemony and want to offer alternatives to the dollar when it comes to international financing.

Security is strict in Kazan; the streets are full of police and armed law enforcement personnel. Russian security forces will no doubt be aware that drone strikes in April hit the town of Yelabuga and an oil refinery in Nizhnekamsk, both of which are further east than the city. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Army recruitment signs are attached to pedestrian railings.

While Ukraine is “very, very far away, the modern ballistic missile can come here very easily,” Gavrilov said.

“I hope there will be some kind of peace negotiations, because there will be exhaustion on one side or the other,” he added of the war that took his father’s life.

“Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and I wonder what the purpose of that was. For me personally, I don’t need these kinds of victories,” Gavrilov added.

Keir Simmons and Natasha Lebedeva reported from Kazan. Freddie Clayton reported from London.