Russian Views on BRICS and the Future World Order

Summary

Russian officials and analysts present BRICS and the SCO as pillars of a multipolar, Eurasia-centred order, tie the Ukraine war to a century-long Western crisis and Russia's "World Majority" pivot, and frame it as driving a Russian cultural and spiritual renewal.

What it argues

1. Pillars of a post-Western order

   Lavrov says BRICS launched its 2023 expansion process to help build a more just, polycentric world order. Karaganov traces the Western-led order's crisis from World War I through decolonisation and the Soviet collapse, urging parallel institutions within BRICS and the SCO rather than scrapping the UN, IMF and World Bank outright. Russian officials cast BRICS's growth as a deliberate step toward a non-Western global order.

2. Confrontation and Eurasian diplomacy

   Galuzin says the Russia-West confrontation predates 2022 or 2014, rooted in NATO enlargement and disregard for indivisible security, and aims at Russia's strategic defeat. He cites the CIS, EAEU, CSTO, SCO and CICA, plus a March 2025 Russia-Belarus treaty committing both states to nuclear-backed mutual defence, as building a Eurasian security architecture open to all states. Russia frames its strategic partnership with China, explicitly "not bloc-based," as reinforcing this multipolar order. Moscow frames the Ukraine war as part of a long Western effort to strip Russia of great-power status, met by deeper Eurasian ties.

3. BRICS-SCO Eurasian pillars, not a bloc

   Bordachev argues BRICS should avoid imitating power-based blocs like the EU, G7 or NATO, building cohesion instead around shared development goals. Panova argues BRICS and the SCO can act as complementary pillars of a "Greater Eurasia," eventually drawing in blocs like the AU, ASEAN, Arab League and CELAC. Analysts propose multi-speed, non-bloc cooperation between BRICS and the SCO as the route to a Eurasian order.

4. De-dollarisation and payments

   Panova says 67% of intra-BRICS trade is now conducted in national currencies, with work ongoing on an alternative payment system. The SCO's planned bank, agreed at Tianjin, remains inoperative; non-BRICS states may instead join the New Development Bank. BRICS currency initiatives are advancing but have not yet produced a working alternative payment system.

5. Energy, minerals and digital chains

   Panova cites the SCO Energy Club (proposed 2006) and BRICS Energy Research Platform (2017) as venues to build joint producer-consumer and critical-minerals processing chains. She notes BRICS's Rio declaration on AI governance and China's proposed international AI centre, arguing the priority is open rules, not closed platforms. Russian analysts see energy, minerals and AI governance as concrete fields for BRICS-SCO coordination.

6. Sustainable development agenda

   Bordachev says BRICS states share an interest in advancing UN Sustainable Development Goals that Western-dominated institutions block. He proposes BRICS begin with a joint development initiative for West Africa. Development cooperation, not bloc politics, is proposed as BRICS's route to global governance.

7. Cultural and spiritual renewal

   Karaganov says the war has pushed Russia to shed "Westernism" and return to its "true self," producing what he calls a multidimensional economic, cultural and spiritual Renaissance. He cites historic openness to African, Latin American and Eastern cultures, from an 18th-century Ethiopian general under Peter the Great to poet Pushkin's African ancestry. Karaganov frames the war's domestic and cultural effects as a deliberate renewal of Russian identity.

8. Russophobia and European decline

   Karaganov attributes European hostility to Russia partly to a historic "cultural racism" rooted in centuries of Russian military victories over Europe, including in World War II. He says today's wave stems from European elites' domestic failures and what he calls "post-human" values spreading in Western societies. Karaganov presents hostility to Russia as centuries-old and, in his telling, a symptom of Europe's own decline.