KAZAN, Russia: Two dozen world leaders are gathering in Russia on Tuesday for the opening of a summit of the BRICS group, an alliance of emerging economies that the Kremlin hopes will challenge Western “hegemony.”
The summit is the biggest such meeting in Russia since it ordered troops into Ukraine and comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to demonstrate that Western attempts to isolate Moscow over the two-and-a-half-year offensive have failed.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — all key partners for Russia — are scheduled to join the summit, hosted in the city of Kazan from October 22 to 24. Xi was en route to the meeting, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported Tuesday.
Moscow has made expanding the BRICS group — an acronym for core members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — a pillar of its foreign policy.
The main issues on the agenda include Putin’s idea for a BRICS-led payment system to rival SWIFT, an international financial network that Russian banks were cut off from in 2022, as well as the escalating conflict in the Middle East.
The Kremlin has touted the gathering as a diplomatic triumph that will help it build an alliance to challenge Western “hegemony.”
US-Moscow tensions
The United States has dismissed the idea that BRICS could become a “geopolitical rival” but has expressed concern about Moscow flexing its diplomatic muscle as the Ukraine conflict rages.
Moscow has been steadily advancing on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine this year while strengthening its ties with China, Iran and North Korea — three of Washington’s adversaries.
By gathering the BRICS group in Kazan, the Kremlin “aims to show that not only is Russia not isolated, it has partners and allies,” Moscow-based political analyst Konstantin Kalachev told AFP.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Putin in 2023 over the illegal deportation of children from Ukraine, and the Russian leader abandoned plans to attend the previous summit in ICC member South Africa.
This time round, the Kremlin wants to show an “alternative to Western pressure and that the multipolar world is a reality,” Kalachev said, referring to Moscow’s efforts to shift power away from the West to other regions.
The Kremlin has said it wants global affairs to be guided by international law, “not on rules that are set by individual states, namely the United States.”
“We believe that BRICS is a prototype of multipolarity, a structure uniting the Southern and Eastern hemispheres on the principles of sovereignty and respect for each other,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said.
“What BRICS is doing is gradually — brick by brick — building a bridge to a more democratic and just world order,” he added.
Attending delegates
In Kazan, Putin is set to meet individually with Modi and Xi, as well as the leaders of South Africa and Egypt on Tuesday, followed by separate talks with Erdogan and Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is also undertaking his first trip to Russia since April 2022 to attend the summit. He will sit down with Putin on Thursday, according to a program shared by Ushakov.
Ahead of the summit, AFP journalists in the city reported heightened security measures and a visible police presence.
The surrounding Tatarstan region, which is some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the border with Ukraine, has previously been hit by long-range Ukrainian drone attacks.
Movement around the city center is being limited, residents advised to stay home, and university students moved out of dormitories, local media reported.
Russia-Ukraine war
The West believes Russia is using the BRICS group to expand its influence and promote its own narratives about the Ukraine conflict.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned other countries could feel emboldened if Putin wins on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Starting with four members when it was established in 2009, BRICS has since expanded to include several other emerging nations such as South Africa, Egypt and Iran.
But the group is also rife with internal divisions, including between key members India and China.
Turkiye, a NATO member with complex ties to both Moscow and the West, announced in early September that it also wanted to join the bloc.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva canceled his planned trip to the summit at the last minute after suffering a head injury that caused a minor brain haemorrhage.
Putin seeks to rival West with BRICS summit
https://arab.news/n4jzj
Putin seeks to rival West with BRICS summit
- Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are scheduled to join the summit
- Moscow has made expanding the BRICS group a pillar of its foreign policy
Kyiv says received bodies of 757 killed Ukrainian troops
- The exchange of prisoners and return of their remains is one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv
The exchange of prisoners and return of their remains is one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv since the Kremlin mobilized its army in Ukraine in February 2022.
The repatriation announced by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a Ukrainian state agency, is the largest in months and underscores the high cost and intensity of fighting ahead of the war’s three-year anniversary.
“The bodies of 757 fallen defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters said in a post on social media.
It specified that 451 of the bodies were returned from the “Donetsk direction,” probably a reference to the battle for the mining and transport hub of Pokrovsk.
The city that once had around 60,000 residents has been devastated by months of Russian bombardments and is the Kremlin’s top military priority at the moment.
The statement also said 34 dead were returned from morgues inside Russia, where Kyiv last August mounted a shock offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region.
Friday’s repatriation is at least the fifth involving 500 or more Ukrainian bodies since October.
Military death tolls are state secrets both in Russia and Ukraine but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed last December that 43,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed and 370,000 had been wounded since 2022.
The total number is likely to be significantly higher.
Russia does not announce the return of its bodies or give up-to-date information on the numbers of its troops killed fighting in Ukraine.
EU says it is ready to ease sanctions on Syria
- The top EU diplomat said the EU would start by easing sanctions that are necessary to rebuild the country
ANKARA: The European Union’s foreign policy chief said the 27-member bloc is ready to ease sanctions on Syria, but added the move would be a gradual one contingent on the transitional Syrian government’s actions.
Speaking during a joint news conference in Ankara with Turkiye’s foreign minister on Friday, Kaja Kallas also said the EU was considering introducing a “fallback mechanism” that would allow it to reimpose sanctions if the situation in Syria worsens.
“If we see the steps of the Syrian leadership going to the right direction, then we are also willing to ease next level of sanctions,” she said. “We also want to have a fallback mechanism. If we see that the developments are going to the wrong direction, we are also putting the sanctions back.”
The top EU diplomat said the EU would start by easing sanctions that are necessary to rebuild the country that has been battered by more than a decade of civil war.
The plan to ease sanctions on Syria would be discussed at a EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday, Kallas said.
Taliban reject ICC arrest warrant as ‘politically motivated’
- The Taliban swept back to power in 2021 after ousting US-backed government in Afghanistan
- The Afghan rulers say the court should ‘not ignore the religious and national values of people’
KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban government said on Friday an arrest warrant sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its leaders was “politically motivated.”
It comes a day after the ICC chief prosecutor said he was seeking warrants against senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan over the persecution of women — a crime against humanity.
“Like many other decisions of the (ICC), it is devoid of a fair legal basis, is a matter of double standards and is politically motivated,” said a statement from the Foreign Ministry posted on social media platform X.
“It is regrettable that this institution has turned a blind eye to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by foreign forces and their domestic allies during the twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan.”
It said the court should “not attempt to impose a particular interpretation of human rights on the entire world and ignore the religious and national values of people of the rest of the world.”
The Taliban swept back to power in 2021 after ousting the American-backed government in a rapid but largely bloodless military takeover, imposing a severe interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, on the population and heavily restricting all aspects of women’s lives.
Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister Mohammad Nabi Omari, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, said the ICC “can’t scare us.”
“If these were fair and true courts, they should have brought America to the court, because it is America that has caused wars, the issues of the world are caused by America,” he said at an event in eastern Khost city attended by an AFP journalist.
He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should also be brought before the court over the country’s war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’ attacks in October 2023.
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister and three top Hamas leaders in November last year.
Afghanistan’s government claims it secures Afghan women’s rights under sharia, but many of its edicts are not followed in the rest of the Islamic world and have been condemned by Muslim leaders.
It is the only country in the world where girls and women are banned from education.
Women have been ordered to cover their hair and faces and wear all-covering Islamic dress, have been barred from parks and stopped from working in government offices.
ICC chief Karim Khan said there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds.”
Khan said Afghan women and girls, as well as the LGBTQ community, were facing “an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban.”
“Our action signals that the status quo for women and girls in Afghanistan is not acceptable,” Khan said.
ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application before deciding whether to issue the warrants, a process that could take weeks or even months.
The court, based in The Hague, was set up to rule on the world’s worst crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It has no police force of its own and relies on its 125 member states to carry out its warrants — with mixed results.
In theory, this means that anyone subject to an ICC arrest warrant cannot travel to a member state for fear of being detained.
Khan warned he would soon be seeking additional arrest warrant applications for other Taliban officials.
Taliban reject ICC arrest warrant as ‘politically motivated’
- Prosecutor said he was seeking warrants against senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan over the persecution of women
It comes a day after the ICC chief prosecutor said he was seeking warrants against senior Taliban leaders in Afghanistan over the persecution of women — a crime against humanity.
“Like many other decisions of the (ICC), it is devoid of a fair legal basis, is a matter of double standards and is politically motivated,” said a statement from the Foreign Ministry posted on social media platform X.
“It is regrettable that this institution has turned a blind eye to war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by foreign forces and their domestic allies during the twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan.”
It said the court should “not attempt to impose a particular interpretation of human rights on the entire world and ignore the religious and national values of people of the rest of the world.”
The Taliban swept back to power in 2021 after ousting the American-backed government in a rapid but largely bloodless military takeover, imposing a severe interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia, on the population and heavily restricting all aspects of women’s lives.
Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister Mohammad Nabi Omari, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, said the ICC “can’t scare us.”
“If these were fair and true courts, they should have brought America to the court, because it is America that has caused wars, the issues of the world are caused by America,” he said at an event in eastern Khost city attended by an AFP journalist.
He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should also be brought before the court over the country’s war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’ attacks in October 2023.
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister and three top Hamas leaders in November last year.
Afghanistan’s government claims it secures Afghan women’s rights under sharia, but many of its edicts are not followed in the rest of the Islamic world and have been condemned by Muslim leaders.
It is the only country in the world where girls and women are banned from education.
Women have been ordered to cover their hair and faces and wear all-covering Islamic dress, have been barred from parks and stopped from working in government offices.
ICC chief Karim Khan said there were reasonable grounds to suspect that Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and chief justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani “bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds.”
Khan said Afghan women and girls, as well as the LGBTQ community, were facing “an unprecedented, unconscionable and ongoing persecution by the Taliban.”
“Our action signals that the status quo for women and girls in Afghanistan is not acceptable,” Khan said.
ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application before deciding whether to issue the warrants, a process that could take weeks or even months.
The court, based in The Hague, was set up to rule on the world’s worst crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It has no police force of its own and relies on its 125 member states to carry out its warrants — with mixed results.
In theory, this means that anyone subject to an ICC arrest warrant cannot travel to a member state for fear of being detained.
Khan warned he would soon be seeking additional arrest warrant applications for other Taliban officials.
Bangladeshi botanist builds online plant community, one viral video at a time
- Azharul Islam Khan’s clips about plants earned him a million followers on social media
- He introduces them to indigenous Bangladeshi flora species and basics of plant medicine
DHAKA: When Azharul Islam Khan’s father gave him bougainvillea stems to grow, it marked his first experience tending to plants — a lesson that 40 years later would shape his social media fame in Bangladesh.
Khan was just 14 when his adventure with botany began. Unfamiliar with how to properly water the colorful ornamental vines, he lost two of the stems he tried to grow, but another two survived and blossomed.
“One was red, and the other was white. It was very inspiring when the two branches stayed alive, and I felt amazed,” Khan told Arab News at Zinda Park in Dhaka, surrounded by various tree and flower species, many of which have been featured in his online classes.
The classes are unlike traditional botany courses. Khan keeps his videos short and simple, focusing on the knowledge that he believes everyone should possess to understand plant life, know the basics of botanical medicine, and appreciate biodiversity.
His classroom is open to all, regardless of their academic background, and more than 1 million people have followed him on Facebook since he started regularly sharing his clips in 2023.
The videos often go viral and many have gained millions of views.
A pharmacist by training and profession, Khan also holds a degree in botany from the University of Dhaka.
“I like nature and plants and trees from my childhood. It’s my passion ... and I learned it from my father,” he said.
“When I see a plant, a flower, how it blooms, how it survives, it is amazing. When I walk and observe the flowers and plants growing, I feel pleased. And it is very important not only for me. It is very important for all the people ... Plants always support our wildlife. If wildlife remains alive, then us, humans, we will remain alive.”
In 2023, Bangladeshi researchers published a red list of plants, which showed that over the past few decades the country has lost seven flora species. Some 127 are currently endangered and 262 are considered vulnerable.
Khan believes that 30 of them are nearly extinct.
“If we don’t take special care of these species, within a very short time they will disappear in our country. So, we need to take care of these plants,” he said.
“We need indigenous plants ... local plants are very important for local nature.”
His videos spread awareness on the importance of various species for the entire ecosystem and for the individual lives of his students.
“I want to make them learn how to grow plants, how important it is for human life,” he said.
“I am trying to do this for the nation, for the future generations, for Bangladesh.”
The videos find appeal among his followers as they offer practical knowledge too.
“I watch brother Azhar’s videos regularly. The best part is that his videos are short — one and a half minutes, two minutes, or three minutes long. I like this style very much,” Mohammad Zakir Hossain, a shopkeeper from Narayanganj, told Arab News.
“Many plants grow all around us. But we have no idea about the benefits of these plants. I came to know about their medicinal values and their names. It’s a great gain for me.”
