Russia will try to convince its BRICS partners to build an alternative platform for international payments that will be "immunized" against Western sanctions, reports Reuters. This will happen during the summit of the organization, which will be held from October 22-24 in the Russian city of Kazan, writes BTA.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to turn BRICS, whose members include Brazil, China, India, South Africa, and more recently Egypt, the UAE, Iran and Ethiopia, into a political and commercial counterpoint to the West.
The meeting in Kazan is presented by the Kremlin as proof that Western efforts to isolate Russia are failing. Moreover, Putin intends to propose a complete overhaul of the global financial system and an end to the dominance of the dollar, with the creation of an alternative payment system being key to this.
It should be based on a network of commercial banks linked through the central banks of the BRICS countries, according to documents prepared by the finance ministry and the central bank of Russia.
The system must use blockchain technologies for the storage and transfer of digital tokens based on the national currencies of the participating countries. This way it will be possible to bypass the dollar payments.
For the Kremlin, this is the way to overcome its problems with transactions even with "friendly" countries such as, for example, China, whose commercial banks fear they could be subject to sanctions because of their ties to Russia.
According to Russian officials, the construction of the system is quite possible, but "it will take time", and an additional difficulty may be the expansion of the group, which began last year.