Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend the 12th BRICS Summit to be hosted virtually by Russia on Tuesday, where leaders will focus on key issues such as mitigating the impact of the Covid-19, reforming the multilateral system and cooperating in such areas as trade, health, energy and counter-terrorism.

“India will be taking over the Chairmanship of the BRICS, which would be the third BRICS Presidency for India since its inception (after 2012 and 2016), and will host the 13th BRICS Summit in 2021,” according to an official Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) release on Monday.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin will chair the meet, leaders from the other BRICS countries, which includes Brazil, China and South Africa, will attend. The theme of the meeting is ‘Global Stability, Shared Security and Innovative Growth’.

Russia is focussed on promoting multi-faceted co-operation among the BRICS countries to contribute to raising the living standards and quality of life, according to an official statement from Russia.

Strategic partnerships

The statement from Russia also said that this year the five countries have continued close strategic partnerships on all three major pillars: peace and security, economy and finance, cultural and people-to-people exchanges.