We would like to object to the distorted understanding of the essence of BRICS.
e noticed that the article “EU and Indonesia need to listen to each other first” by the head of the Centre for European and Eurasian Studies Radityo Dharmaputra published in The Jakarta Post on Jan. 10, 2025, contains an incorrect interpretation of the current geopolitical situation.
We would like to object to the author’s distorted understanding of the essence of BRICS. Despite the fact that BRICS does not include Western countries, it is not directed against the West. The BRICS Summit in Kazan in October 2024 has shown common views of the group’s member-states on key international issues and its intention to amplify the role of emerging markets and the voices of developing countries regarding global problems. Primarily, it is about ensuring strategic stability and building up an architecture of equal and indivisible security, strengthening multipolarity, implementing its own substantial agenda, including economic and investment cooperation, space exploration, technologies and innovation (in the framework of BRICS Global Research Advanced Infrastructure Network, GRAIN), health care, cultural and sport exchanges.
Indeed, within BRICS, the issues of cross-border transactions in currencies alternative to the United States dollar are being considered. Yet this is quite natural for the international market environment – independent states have the right to choose the means of payments and financial settlements. It means that BRICS has become one of the pillars of multipolarity and multilateralism in the modern world.
Commenting on Radityo Dharmaputra’s statements about “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”, I would like to say that Russia did not start the conflict. As President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin repeatedly said, Russia started the special military operation in order to end the war which the Kiev regime was conducting against its own people in Donbass. Moreover, despite all the promises, NATO has been expanding eastward for many years, bringing its military infrastructure closer to Russian borders, which has become one of the primary causes of the Ukraine crisis.
We strongly prefer a peaceful solution through negotiations on the basis of respecting Russia’s legitimate security interests, as well as basic human, language and religious rights of Russian-speaking people in Ukraine that have been taken away by a series of laws by enacted the Ukrainian authorities.
Sergei Tolchenov
Russian Ambassador to Indonesia
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