Belarus Foreign Minister Maksim Ryzhenkov, speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly this past week, has expressed hope that his country’s membership application will be approved at the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia on Oct. 22-24. He said that Russia is “formulating the list of these countries that will be in the first wave of enlargement.”
RT adds that Belarusian First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Lukashevich said earlier that his country is in the first pool of BRICS candidates, along with Algeria, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Bolivia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Cuba, Honduras, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, Senegal, and Thailand.
