BRICS has given Russia a platform to claim it is not isolated but none of the anti-sanctions machinery President Vladimir Putin wants from it, Anton Barbashin argues in Riddle.

In an analysis published on August 28, Barbashin, the editorial director of the independent Russia-focused publication, sets what Putin has asked of the grouping since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine against what it has actually delivered. He sorts the Kremlin's demands into the three areas Putin himself lists - "politics and security, economics and finance, and cultural-humanitarian contacts" - and finds that only the last, and most symbolic, has come good.

The verdict goes to the heart of the Kremlin's case that the war has pushed Russia towards a rising "Global Majority" rather than into isolation. The piece, part of a Riddle series on how Russia's partnerships have changed since 2022, appeared two weeks before the 18th BRICS summit, held in New Delhi on September 12-13, the member Barbashin identifies as the most sceptical of Moscow's agenda.

Putin has called BRICS "one of the key elements of the emerging multipolar world" at least once a year since 2013 or earlier, sometimes word for word, as in 2016 and 2024. Transcripts on the Kremlin website show him mentioning the grouping anything from a dozen times a year to several hundred in 2024, the year Russia held the chair. The language has barely moved in almost 15 years.

"Putin's statements on BRICS are rarely consistent," Barbashin writes, adding that they "almost never set out clear success criteria for the organization" or spell out the "just world" that is supposed to be the goal.

Since 2022 the economic and financial agenda has mattered most to Moscow, and its main driver remains softening the blow of Western sanctions. Putin argues that settling trade in local currencies cuts debt-servicing costs and shields members from geopolitical risk, and he regularly complains that "the dollar is being used as a weapon". He has pressed for an independent payment system "immune to political pressure, abuse and external sanctions interference", a bigger role for the New Development Bank (NDB) as an alternative to the World Bank, a BRICS investment platform, and more technical projects such as insurance cooperation and alternative credit-rating agencies.

Partners with other priorities

The other founding members have little appetite for most of this, Barbashin argues. India is the most cautious: its politicians describe the country as non-Western but not anti-Western, and Moscow's combative post-2022 rhetoric finds no echo in New Delhi. Then-Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das said in 2024 that de-dollarisation was simply not on India's agenda and that it would keep using the dollar for trade and reserves, India rejected a common currency outright, and in 2025 Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the country had no interest in undermining the dollar's global role. Indian officials have been steadily diversifying reserves into gold without casting the move as a break with the dollar.

Brazil sits close to India. It is wary of what it sees as the "anti-Western tilt of Russia and China" and wants no more than gradual reform of international institutions, although it has been relatively open to national-currency settlement and alternative payment systems - it dropped the common-currency idea during its own 2025 presidency. South Africa puts the African agenda first, has told Washington it does not share the anti-Americanism Moscow tries to inject into the grouping, and treats Russia's economic proposals as secondary.

China is the most supportive, backing Moscow on unilateral sanctions and against the Western "rules-based order", and it pushed enlargement jointly with Russia over the objections of other members. It too insists BRICS is non-Western rather than anti-Western, however, and for Beijing the grouping is one foreign-policy tool among many, and not the most important. It favours the shift to national currencies, from which the yuan always gains, and a bigger NDB.

"These diverging interests explain why Russian priorities are systematically diluted to the most general formulations in final BRICS documents, and why any attempt to create collective anti-sanctions mechanisms is blocked," Barbashin writes.

Expansion as a narrative

Moscow's clearest political win has been the enlargement of 2024-2025 to take in Egypt, Iran, the UAE, Ethiopia and Indonesia. Three of the newcomers matter a great deal to Russia: Iran is a strategic partner, the UAE has become one of the main conduits for sanctions circumvention and parallel imports, with trade with Russia tripling since 2022, and Egypt is increasingly Russia's "gateway to Africa". Barbashin argues, however, that those ties grew out of the consequences of the war rather than any vision of a new world order, and would look much the same had BRICS never existed.

"Expansion therefore functions as a narrative rather than an institutional success," he writes. The new members joined an existing club, not a Russian anti-sanctions project, and the enlargement, like members' refusal to join Western sanctions, does at least undercut claims that Russia is isolated.

Working groups on terrorism, cybersecurity and climate have been set up but have little to show. Summit declarations treat multipolarity as a mere possibility: the 2024 text spoke of new centres of power that "can lay the foundations" for a multipolar order, and the 2025 one said multipolarity "can expand the opportunities" of developing economies. Russia has not secured a single collective mechanism against Western sanctions since the war began, its anti-Western rhetoric stays out of the key documents, and the core members neither share its reading of the war nor recognise its occupation of Ukrainian territory.

Local currencies, bilateral gains

The most tangible economic progress has been the rise in trade settled in national currencies, although Barbashin says this is not true de-dollarisation, since every member apart from Russia, China and Iran still keeps its reserves in dollars. By Russian officials' own figures 90% of Russia's trade with BRICS partners now bypasses the dollar, and almost 99% of trade with China is in national currencies. That cuts sanctions risk for Russia, but the shift is largely confined to Russia's own trade: only about 30% of trade between Brazil and China is settled in yuan and reais.

The NDB had approved $42.9bn of financing for 139 projects by the end of 2025, yet it has frozen approval of any new Russian projects because of the war. A full payment system is still being planned and tested, with even optimistic estimates putting any launch at 2030 or later, and the common currency was abandoned in 2025. The investment platform and alternative rating agencies have not gone beyond political statements.

The support that has counted most, BRICS members' readiness to buy Russian exports and supply goods to the Russian market, has happened entirely bilaterally, outside the grouping's collective mechanisms, Barbashin says.

Only on the cultural and humanitarian track does BRICS give Putin what he asks for. The BRICS Games, film and culture festivals and science and innovation forums run regularly, and a BRICS Alliance of Folk and Dance Culture was set up on Russia's initiative. Because no hard national interests stand in the way, the track works "as a showcase and as a means of maintaining a sense of constant forward movement," Barbashin writes.

"In the end, after 2022 BRICS has served Russia primarily in a narrative and image-building capacity," he concludes, giving the Kremlin a stage from which to speak for the "Global Majority" but no collective means of reducing its geopolitical and economic risks. As long as India, Brazil and the other members keep pursuing interests that diverge from Russia's, he expects the gap between Putin's rhetoric and BRICS practice to persist.