Putin, Modi to meet Friday ahead of BRICS summit: Kremlin

Underlining that Russia does 90 per cent of its payments with BRICS member countries through national currencies, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Friday, a day ahead of the summit of BRICS leaders in New Delhi on September 12-13.

In an online interaction with India-based journalists, organised by Russian media outlet Sputnik India, Peskov said, “Our two leaders are in a very close personal contact, they are very pragmatic… and they are as sincere as to be able to discuss in a very open and constructive way the most sensitive issues on the global agenda and our bilateral relations.”

He described BRICS as a flexible club organised around policy and security, economics and finance, and cultural and humanitarian cooperation.

“Like always, they (Modi and Putin) will touch on the bilateral agenda… Trade and economic cooperation have a very wide scope. You know that lots of issues cannot be discussed publicly, having some unfriendly countries that are trying to put obstacles in the way of further development of our cooperation. So it is being discussed discreetly, but in a very, very constructive manner,” he said, indicating the threat of sanctions from the Western countries on Indian businesses dealing with Russia.

“Indian companies are interested in the Russian market. They are interested in broadening their investments in the Russian economy in various projects. We appreciate and welcome that,” he said.

On de-dollarisation, Peskov said, “BRICS is against no one. BRICS is for participating countries, for their national interests, and Russia is one of the BRICS countries. And Russia was deprived of the right to use the American dollar and to use the Euro. So it’s a reserve currency for the whole world, and the United States has taken a decision to deprive us of the right to use this reserve currency.

What should we do? We should tell ourselves why don’t we use our own money? Is it worth the American dollar? No, to some extent it is even better. And we started to propose using national currencies to different countries.

It’s not because we are against the dollar, and we do not want to claim any de-dollarisation policy. We are simply doing what better corresponds with our national interest… America is ruining trust in the US dollar, and the more trust is ruined, the more trust is going in favour of national currencies.”