Transforming BRICS from a global club into a global lab will require significant political commitment, persistence and stamina. A single summit, as important as it is, will not suffice. However, the meeting in Kazan can become an important step toward this clearly achievable, though quite ambitious, goal.

The Summit of the Future, with all the reservations one might have about its specific outputs and outcomes, can be an important step in the right direction.

When the current dynamics of China-Russia relations is discussed, the conversation often boils down to the concept of a "senior-junior partnership." A popular view - especially in the West - is that with more cooperation between the two nations, Russia is gradually, but inevitably, turning into a junior partner to China.

The good news, however, is that the West might have a deficit of material resources and political will to wage a large-scale ice-breaker race with Moscow and Beijing.

Instead of trying to shift problems from a sick head to a healthy one, the US leaders should meticulously conceptualize and consistently implement a long-term re-industrialization strategy that could once again unite the divided nation around common goals and aspirations.

Trilateral consultations among China, Russia and India on strategic stability would not only contribute to world peace and security, but also build trust and mutual confidence between Beijing and New Delhi.

The US remains an indisputable global leader in terms of defense expenditures. The creeping militarization of world politics turns international relations into a zero-sum game, in which the goal is not to resolve a difficult problem, but rather to defeat the opponent.

All of us have to learn from each other and assist each other in the uneasy process of maturing as a civilization. The GCI provides valuable guidance on how this process of mutual learning and mutual assistance should develop further

If humankind is committed to its survival and prospering, it has to choose the Star Trek path over the Star Wars path.

In years to come, the continent will present both some of the most dangerous challenges and many of the most spectacular opportunities for those willing to engage with Africa.

Hopefully, throughout 2024 the two sides could make an important step in moving from basic cooperation to more advanced forms of collaboration. This development would serve not only strategic interests of the two sides, but also global stability.

The shift from the balance of powers to a balance of interests is critically important, if humankind wants to survive through the 21st century.

Russia and China could work together on these and other food security matters.

Though it is hardly possible to get back to where the region was 20 years ago, the spirit of the six-party talks remains the best hope for security solutions in the region of Northeast Asia.

A reasonable approach would be opening doors for a gradual rise of membership and concentrating on building the institutional capacity of the BRICS.

It would be unrealistic to expect the World Peace Forum to find unambiguous and convincing answers to these and many other questions debated there. But I was impressed with surprisingly optimistic views expressed during most of plenary sessions and thematic panels.

The SCO should continue to grow in numbers of its members, not be shy to discuss even the most sensitive and the most divisive matters, and resist the temptation to find a narrowly defined focus for its future activities.

In sum, US foreign policy under President Joe Biden reminds people of a very advanced and highly sophisticated smartphone that has a rather weak battery, which is not really energy efficient.

The Russian-Chinese cooperation on global public goods should not be perceived as an exclusive agreement between Moscow and Beijing. It should be as open as possible to other international actors - big and small, rich and poor, representing the Global South and the Global North.

These days, it is much easier to be pessimistic about the future than to be optimistic about it. Still, one should not forget that the darkest hour is just before dawn. This might be the most important takeaway from President Xi's visit to Moscow.

Since the very beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict a year ago, one of the prime goals of the West was to isolate Moscow in the international system. To achieve this goal, it was not good enough to sustain the newly acquired Western cohesion; the real challenge was to bring to the “right side of history” as many nations of the Global South as possible. If the West were to succeed in this undertaking, Russia would become a truly “pariah state.”

The recent international tour of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida turned out to be one of the most remarkable events of early 2023. The trip, which included a number of capitals in Europe and in North America, was officially presented as a step in preparing for the G7 Summit to be held in June in the Japanese city of Hiroshima. However, Kishida's diplomatic marathon was also an opportunity to introduce the latest changes in the Japanese foreign and security policy to key Japanese partners, allies and, arguably, even to its opponents.

Recent diplomatic activities around Ukraine imply that Russia, Ukraine, the US and the West at large are approaching 2023 with no immediate prospects not only for a comprehensive political settlement, and not even for a ceasefire.

Many newly elected Republican politicians believe that the distribution of Ukraine war efforts is unfair since the Ukrainian crisis is a European problem rather than a US one. The pressure on Europe is likely to increase, writes a Russian scholar

Leaders with a narrow and flimsy political and social base cannot demonstrate a strong leadership, no matter how bright and committed they might be.

Russia and China now clearly see eye to eye on a range of international security and development issues; such a unity of views is historically justified and also reflects the current geopolitical balance in the international system. This unity constitutes a solid foundation for a long-term mutually beneficial cooperation between the two nations; one can only hope that the relationship will remain vibrant and will get stronger over time.

The crisis around Taiwan Straits speaks volumes about the inability of Washington to conduct a coherent foreign policy.

Diversity is one of the main sources of G20 legitimacy that G7 or NATO clearly lacks. Diversity and representativeness are assets that the Group of 20 cannot easily relinquish.

The chances for US to be sucessful in the Summit of Americas are quite low. Indeed, who among leaders of sovereign states would like to become an obedient schoolboy drilled by a demanding teacher?

Moscow should not expect a new transatlantic rift to come in the near future. The reality is that Russia will have to prepare for a protracted confrontation with a newly consolidated Collective West. Fortunately, the modern world is much larger than the Collective West, even if it is newly aware of its common historical destiny.

On February 4, on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a Joint Statement on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development. It is a rather lengthy document, outlining common approaches of China and Russia to some of the most fundamental issues of the modern world including regional and worldwide security, democracy and political inclusion, social justice and climate change, arms control and nuclear nonproliferation, national sovereignty and multilateralism.

However, at the end of the day, the future of Kazakhstan should be decided by the people of the country, not by any outside actors, no matter how benign they present themselves as being. In order to remain stable and economically successful, Kazakhstan needs a new social contract and such a contract can emerge only in course of a dialogue between state and society.

In the 21st century, the emphasis on adversaries seems to be an obsolete foreign policy concept.

Not sending officials to the Olympic Games in Beijing, Western leaders demonstrated a spectacular lack of vision and a deficit of common sense - and neither for the first nor for the last time in modern history.

The US would happily perform the role of an enthusiastic cheerleader in the unfolding Vilnius-Beijing-Taipei conflict, but that's all the US would be willing to do for its Lithuanian allies.

The Summit for Democracy intends to reduce the multi-color palette of the modern world to a minimalist black and white graphics of a global fight between “democracies” and “autocracies. If the goal is to isolate China and Russia, this won't work well.

When it comes to reforms of the United Nations, it is indispensable for China and Russia, as long-time UN champions and supporters, to take the lead in promoting bottom-up approach to UN reforms. Moscow and Beijing have already accumulated a lot of experience in working together in drafting UNSC resolutions, in setting agendas for UN General Assemblies and in interacting with various groups of UN member states.

In Russia they simply do not believe that if things go really bad for Taiwan island, the US would dare to come to its rescue and that in the end of the day Taipei would have to yield to Beijing without a single shot fired.

The US seems to approach other cultures and other sets of values as manifestations of incomplete social and political modernizations.

To focus the US public attention on China and its alleged wrongdoings is a wrong COVID agenda. The Biden administration has yet to demonstrate that it can handle the real COVID agenda, and not hiding behind a false one.

No doubt, Afghanistan stands out as a formidable challenge for SCO, but it is also a unique opportunity for the alliance of Eurasian nations.

Western decision-makers seem to consider hosting foreign diplomats not as something natural and uncontroversial but rather as a sort of privilege temporarily granted to a particular country — one that can be denied at any given moment.

The US factor is an important additional incentive for making China-Russia ties more diverse and intensive.

Until President Biden fixes related problems at home, his international human rights crusade will not look too credible even for his fellow citizens.

In sum, decision-makers in Moscow should not regard China and India as two parallel foreign policy priorities that Russia has to choose between and/or keep separate from each other. They should rather approach Beijing and New Delhi as partners, which will become more valuable for Russia if they find ways to work more actively with each other.

Let's face it – no US-China-Russia triangle exists now.

A true reform of the UN cannot start in New York; it should start in national capitals of member states.

If China stops to be the major locomotive for the global economy, the US would be the first country to feel the pain.