At the October 22-24 BRICS Summit in Kazan, 13 of the nearly three dozen nations which have applied for membership in the BRICS were announced as “partner countries.” This new status, approved at the Kazan summit, was designed as a stepping stone toward full BRICS membership. Before each nation is formally admitted, it was announced, there would be consultations with Russia, which holds the rotating chairmanship of BRICS for 2024.
This week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Pankin announced, in his speech at the APEC Ministerial Meeting in Lima, Peru, that Indonesia has been welcomed as an official partner. Bolivian Foreign Minister Celinda Sosa Lunda said on Nov. 13 in an interview with TASS, “Today, we have received an invitation from the Russian Foreign Minister [Sergey Lavrov]. We were invited as a BRICS partner country. We responded positively to this invitation.” Earlier in the week, the government in Minsk also announced that Belarus had officially become a partner nation, declaring that the BRICS gives “hope for a fairer world order.”
