by Pepe Escobar, The Unz Review:
In the year of the Russian presidency of BRICS, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) had to deliver something special.
And deliver it did: over 21,000 people representing no less than 139 nations – a true microcosm of the Global Majority, discussing every facet of the drive towards a multipolar, multinodal (italics mine), polycentric world.
St. Petersburg, beyond all the networking and the frantic deal-making – $78 billion-worth clinched in only three days – crafted three intertwined key messages already resonating all across the Global Majority.
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Message Number One:
President Putin, a “European Russian” and true son of this dazzling, dynamic historic marvel by the Neva, delivered an extremely detailed one-hour speech on the Russian economy at the forum’s plenary session.
The key takeaway: as the collective West launched total economic war against Russia, the civilization-state turned it around and positioned itself as the world’s 4th largest economy by purchasing power parity (PPP).
Putin showed how Russia still carries the potential to launch no less than nine sweeping – global – structural changes, an all-out drive involving the federal, regional, and municipal spheres.
Everything is in play – from global trade and the labor market to digital platforms, modern technologies, strengthening small and medium-sized businesses and exploring the still untapped, phenomenal potential of Russia’s regions.
What was made perfectly clear is how Russia managed to reposition itself beyond sidestepping the – illegitimate – sanctions tsunami to establishing a solid, diversified system oriented towards global trade – and completely linked to the expansion of BRICS. Russia-friendly states already account for three-quarters of Moscow’s trade turnover.
Putin’s emphasis on the Global Majority’s accelerated drive to strengthen sovereignty was directly linked to the collective West doing its best – rather, worst – to undermine trust in their own payment infrastructure.
And that leads us to…
Glazyev and Dilma rock the boat.
Message Number Two:
That was arguably the major breakthrough in St. Petersburg. Putin stated how the BRICS are working on their own payment infrastructure, independent from pressure/sanctions by the collective West.
Putin had a special meeting with Dilma Rousseff, president of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB). They did talk in detail about the bank’s development – and most of all, as later confirmed by Rousseff, about The Unit, whose lineaments were first revealed exclusively by Sputnik: an apolitical, transactional form of cross-border payments, anchored in gold (40%) and BRICS+ currencies (60%).
The day after meeting Putin, president Dilma had an even more crucial meeting at 10 am in a private room at SPIEF with Sergey Glazyev, the Minister for Macro-Economy at the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Glazyev, who had previously provided full academic backing to the Unit concept, explained all the details to President Dilma. They were both extremely pleased with the meeting. A beaming Rousseff revealed that she had already discussed The Unit with Putin. It was agreed there will be a special conference at the NDB in Shanghai on The Unit in September.
This means the new payment system has every chance to be at the table during the BRICS summit in October in Kazan, and be adopted by the current BRICS 10 and the near future, expanded BRICS+.
Now to…
Message Number Three:
It had to be, of course, about BRICS – which everyone, Putin included, stressed will be significantly expanded. The quality of the BRICS-related sessions in St. Petersburg demonstrated how the Global Majority is now facing a unique historical juncture – with a real possibility for the first time in the last 250 years to go all-out for a structural change of the world-system.
And it’s not only about BRICS.
It was confirmed in St. Petersburg that no less than 59 nations – and counting – plan to join not only BRICS but also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).
No wonder: these multilateral organizations now finally have established themselves on the forefront of the drive towards the multimodal (italics mine) – and to quote Putin in his address – “harmonic multipolar world”.
