A two-day BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting began in the western Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod on June 10. It is the bloc’s first summit since its latest expansion in January this year.

Also on June 10, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, and had several other bilateral meetings, including with Brazil's top diplomat.

“If you divide the time into three-year periods, you can see that strategic progress is being made and the situation is changing. BRICS has expanded over the past three years and in the next three years this expanded group will establish a viable framework within which the member states will actually operate,” Professor Alexander Savchenko of the Faculty of Public Administration and Public Policy at RANEPA told the Russian newspaper Izvestia.

On June 11, a broader meeting was held that attracted representatives from international organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), ASEAN, the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), the African Union and the Arab League.

With such a large number of representatives, the BRICS Foreign Ministers meeting also discussed the Ukraine Peace Summit scheduled to take place on the Burgenstock mountain, next to Lake Lucerne in Switzerland later this week.

“The conference came after SPIEF, which focused on multipolarity. And the BRICS meeting itself sent a message before the conference. As we can see, the group did not really support the conference in Switzerland,” Alexey Maslov, director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University, told Izvestia.

For example, China and Brazil have presented their peace plans for Ukraine, which have been criticized in Kiev and NATO. Unlike its BRICS allies, India will attend the summit in the Alpine country, but Delhi is cautious about any Ukrainian proposals, Maslov noted.

For India, the event at the famous Burgenstock resort is seen as an opportunity to strengthen its global position amid competition from China in the Asian region, Mr Maslov said.

BRICS Foreign Ministers issued a joint statement after their meeting on June 10.

In particular, they stressed the need for wider use of national currencies in intra-group settlements, expressed support for comprehensive reform of the United Nations, including the Security Council (UNSC), and welcomed mediation to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

“They (BRICS foreign ministers) expressed satisfaction with the proposals for reconciliation and aimed at resolving the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy,” the statement said.

BRICS originally included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and has now expanded to double its membership. BRICS now has a combined population of about 3.5 billion people, with a combined economy worth more than $28.5 trillion, or about 28% of the global economy .

Minh Duc (According to TASS)