At least a dozen countries interested in joining BRICS: Russian foreign minister

MOSCOW (AA) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that at least a dozen countries are interested in joining the emerging economies’ bloc BRICS.

“Interest in this global association is very, very high and continues to grow. It’s not just Algeria, Argentina, and Iran. In fact, there are more than a dozen such countries,” the minister told a news conference in Moscow, following a meeting with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

Currently, the BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — are working out formal criteria for entering the bloc, Lavrov added.

“Since the applications are already being submitted officially, of course, we expect that working out the criteria and principles for admitting new members to BRICS will not take too long,” he said, noting that first it is necessary to understand how the bloc will develop further in a potentially expanded composition.

The minister said he also briefed Jaishankar about details of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

“We discussed the situation that is currently developing around the attempts of our Western colleagues, under the pretext of Ukrainian events, to strengthen their dominant role in world affairs and not allowing the democratization of international relations,” he said.