Russia ready to contribute to global energy, food security, Putin pledges at BRICS

Vladimir Putin said Russia intended to reinforce cooperation across areas including personnel training and applied research, among others.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday told delegates from Brics nations that Moscow was ready to contribute to global energy and food security, help build reliable logistics routes such as the Arctic and North-South transport corridors, and welcome investment in tourism, industry and trade.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with journalists on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in New Delhi, India. (AP)

Addressing the Brics Business Forum 2026 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi in Russian, Putin said Russia intended to reinforce cooperation across areas including personnel training and applied research, smart technology and unmanned transport. Brics was building a resilient platform for global growth, he said, and the most significant element was that the process was independent of any outside influence.

“It’s not being imposed on us by the so-called golden billion, nor are we trying to impose anything on anyone else. Our approaches are based on innovative and cutting-edge solutions. We prioritise the national interests of our respective countries in pursuing these goals,” he said, using a term he has deployed since 2022 for the roughly one billion people of the developed West.

Brics has 11 members — Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates — along with 10 partner countries: Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

Putin underscored the bloc’s weight against developed-nation groupings. Over the last five years, more than 40% of world GDP had been produced by Brics countries against 29% by the G7, he said, while Brics had accounted for more than half of global growth against the G7’s 18%. “The Brics countries account for more than half of the world’s population, and that is why they have great, dynamic, vibrant domestic markets,” he said.

He pointed to rapid urbanisation and technological advancement across the bloc, and to the rise of national companies as world leaders — India’s Mahindra in IT and AI-based solutions, China’s Huawei in technology, Brazil’s Embraer in aerospace, the UAE’s DP World in logistics and Russia’s Rosatom in peaceful nuclear energy.

Attacking western notions of competition, which he said often transformed into conflict driven by self-interest, Putin said the rivalry was sometimes taking ugly forms — something the Iranian president had also spoken about. “This ugly form is something we see even at the State level, at the government level. Sometimes the measures resorted to are of physical nature, when pipelines are being destroyed, when attempts are undertaken to block international transport corridors to seize maritime vessels, illegal restrictions are applied and there is also the threat of so-called secondary sanctions against those who do not want to follow someone else’s interest and rather look after their own,” he said.

“More than 30,000 sanctions have been slapped on Russia which is twice as much as the number of all sanctions against all other countries of the world combined,” he added.