Consider you’re Vladimir Putin.

The West has dubbed you a pariah for invading Ukraine. Sanctions are aiming to trim off your nation’s financial system from international markets.

And there’s an arrest warrant out for you from the World Prison Courtroom.

How are you able to display the power isn’t operating? Attempt website hosting a peak.

This life within the town of Kazan President Putin will greet greater than 20 heads of condition on the Brics peak of rising economies. A number of the leaders invited are China’s Xi Jinping, Indian High Minister Narendra Modi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The Kremlin has referred to as it one of the most “largest-scale foreign policy events ever” in Russia.

“The clear message is that attempts to isolate Russia have failed,” thinks Chris Weafer, origination spouse of consultancy company Macro-Advisory.

“It’s a big part of the messaging from the Kremlin that Russia is withstanding sanctions. We know there are severe cracks beneath the surface. But at a geopolitical level Russia has all these friends and they’re all going to be Russia’s partners.”

So, who’re Russia’s pals?

Brics stands for Brazil, Russia, Bharat, China and South Africa. The grouping, continuously known as a counterweight to the Western-led international, has expanded to incorporate Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Saudi Arabia, too, has been invited to connect.

The Brics international locations account for 45% of the worldwide people. Added in combination, participants’ economies are use greater than $28.5tn (£22tn). That’s round 28% of the worldwide financial system.

Russian officers have indicated that some other 30 international locations wish to connect Brics or search nearer ties with the membership. A few of these international locations will participate within the peak. In Kazan this life be expecting a accumulation of discuss Brics representing the “global majority”.

However excluding offering Vladimir Putin his week at the geopolitical degree, what’s the match most probably to succeed in?

Prepared to peace the power from Western sanctions, the Kremlin chief will hope to persuade Brics participants to undertake an spare to the buck for international bills.

“A lot of the problems Russia’s economy is facing are linked to cross-border trade and payments. And a lot of that is linked to the US dollar,” says Mr Weafer.

“The US Treasury has enormous power and influence over global trade simply because the US dollar is the main currency for settling that. Russia’s main interest is in breaking the dominance of the US dollar. It wants Brics countries to create an alternative trade mechanism and cross-border settlement system that does not involve the dollar, the euro or any of the G7 currencies, so that sanctions won’t matter so much.”

However critics level to variations inside of Brics. “Likeminded” isn’t a word of honour you may virtue to explain the stream club.

“In some ways it’s a good job for the West that China and India can never agree about anything. Because if those two were really serious, Brics would have enormous influence,” notes Jim O’Neill, former Eminent Economist of Goldman Sachs.

“China and India are doing their best to avoid wanting to attack each other a lot of the time. Trying to get them to really co-operate on economic things is a never-ending challenge.”

It was once Mr O’Neill who, on the flip of the century, dreamt up the acronym “Bric” for 4 rising economies he believed must be “brought into the centre of global policy making”.

However the 4 letters would tackle a occasion of their very own, upcoming the corresponding international locations shaped their very own Bric staff – nearest Brics, when South Africa joined. They’d try to problem the dominance of the G7: the sector’s seven greatest “advanced” economies (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA).

It’s now not simply Bharat and China who’ve their variations. There’s rigidity between two of the latest Brics participants, Egypt and Ethiopia. And, regardless of communicate of detente, Iran and Saudi Arabia have lengthy been regional opponents.

“The idea that they’re all going to fundamentally agree on something of great substance is bonkers really,” believes Mr O’Neill.

And life Russia, fuelled by means of anti-Western sentiment, talks about making a “new world order”, alternative Brics participants, like Bharat, are willing to stock just right political and financial members of the family with the West.

In Kazan, Vladimir Putin’s process might be to skim over the variations and paint an image of team spirit, life appearing the Russian people – and the world folk – that his nation is some distance from free.