Will Belarus enter the BRICS? A Brazilian perspective.

The opening session of the media summit of BRICS in September 2024. Photo: Shutterstock

Between October 22nd and 24th, 2024, the heads of state and government of the BRICS met in the Russian city of Kazan to debate a new round of the group’s expansion. It is expected that countries such as Belarus, Algeria, and Venezuela, among others, will be invited to join the group initially formed by Brazil, China, India, and the Russian Federation. The BRICS countries have been increasingly seen as an opposition bloc to the transatlantic alliance of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the European Union. Although many of its member countries advocate rearranging international institutions to make them ‘more pluralistic,’ the group is also perceived as consolidating Chinese hegemony over a growing range of states. The BRICS expansion movement, therefore, is seen with highly positive eyes by Beijing and Moscow, with the latter committed to breaking its isolation after the imposition of severe sanctions in 2022. However, this movement to include new states is resisted by countries like Brazil, which fears that the excessive asymmetry of economic relations with China will dilute Brasília’s bargaining power in the group’s multilateral negotiations. This hesitation is relevant when analyzing realistic prospects for Belarus’s entry into the BRICS since the Belarusian regime aims to enter the group as fast as possible. Will Brazil’s reluctance to accept new members in BRICS postpone Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s plans? The Brazilian perspective on Belarus is multifaceted, involving economic interests and political perceptions influenced by the history of both countries.

Unlike Brazilian relations with Russia, which will mark 200 years in 2028, the links with Belarus are relatively recent, given that the country has been formally independent for a mere 33 years. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belarus and Brazil established diplomatic relations in 1992, but only in 2011 did the Lukashenka regime establish an embassy in Brasilia. Since then, bilateral relations have developed, in theory, separately from Brazilian-Russian ones, with numerous cooperation protocols signed in the last ten years in fields like technology and culture. Despite this, the Brazilian side inevitably perceives Belarus as an extension of its relations with the Russian Federation. Historically, Brazilian public opinion (but also decision-makers) have little knowledge about the political context that developed in the former Soviet republics after 1991 and tend to continue viewing Eastern Europe as a natural hub for exercising Russian influence. This narrative benefits from the post-colonial worldview in Brazil, which views relations with the West with suspicion and tends to validate the Russian narrative in the region. The trend was reinforced following the 2020 protests against President Lukashenka, who resorted to deepening relations with the Kremlin in order to save his regime, and the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, in which Belarus played a significant part. 

In ideological terms, Vladimir Putin seduces both the Brazilian conservative right, which is religious and concerned with advancing socially progressive agendas, and the left, which is nostalgic for Soviet times, socialist utopia and remains deeply anti-American. Historically, the current political class that governs Brazil is made up of people who were persecuted during the last military dictatorship in the country between 1964 and 1985. The Brazilian political class therefore, sees Washington’s support for establishing that regime as a wound that has not yet healed. This is partially capitalized on by Russian propaganda in the country’s social media. The extent to which Lukashenka can take advantage of this context to improve relations with Brazil and lower the country’s resistance to Minsk’s entry into the group remains to be seen. Despite this cognitive aspect of the Brazilian perception, practical economic issues must also be considered in the relations between Brazil and Belarus.

The war has significantly impacted the relationship between the two countries, particularly in the economic sphere. The structure of commercial relations between the two countries, which were heavily affected by the western sanctions on the Belarusian economy, has been a critical factor. Belarus, along with the Russian Federation, is one of the largest suppliers of agricultural fertilizers for Brazil’s booming agriculture sector. This South American country is on track to become the world’s largest food producer in the coming years, adding pressure to its demand for fertilizers. Nearly 85 per cent of Brazil’s fertilizer demand is met through imports, with 30 per cent of this supply coming from Russian and Belarusian industries. The issue of fertilizers has been central to defining Brazil’s relations with these two countries in the context of the war with Ukraine. During a hearing in the Brazilian Senate in May 2022, the Brazilian ambassador in Minsk stated that his top priority would be “finding ways to mitigate Brazilian difficulties in accessing the product.” Even the Brazilian president at the time, Jair Bolsonaro, made a controversial visit to Moscow just days before the invasion of Ukraine to discuss this matter with President Vladimir Putin.

Here, we can note another essential aspect of the Brazilian position: relations with Russia and Belarus transcend the polarized political scene in Brasília. Suppose there are fundamental differences between the approach adopted by former president Bolsonaro and the current administration of Lula da Silva regarding different topics in international relations, especially Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela. In that case, the same is not true when discussing Russia and Belarus. Part of this apparent cohesion is the pressure that the agricultural lobby, which is very powerful in the Brazilian parliament and interested in importing fertilizers at reasonable prices, exerts on the federal government to maintain good relations with Putin and Lukashenka. However, this relationship of dependence also causes discomfort to Brazilian authorities.

In 2023, the trade flow between Brazil and Belarus totaled 378.8 million US dollars, a modest amount compared to Brazilian foreign trade which stands at 500 billion dollars. However, at the same time, it places Brazil as one of the ten most significant trading partners in the world for Belarus’s small foreign trade. There are complaints in Brasília about the extreme imbalance of these relations. While Belarusian exports to Brazil stood at 372 million dollars last year, it imported value was only at 6.4 million dollars, resulting in a Belarusian surplus of 366 million dollars. Chemical fertilizers accounted for 96 per cent of this balance. Brazilian authorities have repeatedly called for a reactivation of domestic fertilizer production in this context. In 2023, the Brazilian government launched the National Fertilizer Plan (PNF), which predicts that the country’s dependence on imported products will fall by 50 per cent in the coming years. This new policy could neutralize Lukashenka’s greatest asset in his relationship with Brazil.

The practical effects of Belarus joining the BRICS could be significant. While the group does not have shared form of governance or a free trade area, from a financial point of view, Belarus would gain expanded access to the New Development Bank (NDB), popularly known as the “BRICS Bank.” The institution, based in China and chaired by former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, has billions of dollars in its coffers, which could partially alleviate the effects of sanctions on the Belarusian economy. Minsk would also gain access to the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), a 100 billion dollar fund aimed at bailing out countries in the group with problems in their balance of payments. One of the most notable aspects of such mechanisms is denominating its loans in local currency instead of quoting them in US dollars, which follows a logic of ‘de-dollarization’ increasingly cited by the group’s countries as a priority to counteract the American economic influence. It could be good news for the Lukashenka regime, as it would mitigate the risks associated with a sharp change in exchange rates in Belarus.

From a Brazilian perspective, however, not only the already discussed issues of relations with Belarus and Russia must be analyzed, but also the possible side effects of events in other regions of the world. Venezuela, which also aspires to join the BRICS, is a good example. From the tensions caused by Nicolas Maduro’s government on the border with Guyana last year to the electoral process that culminated in the re-election of the Venezuelan leader in July – widely contested by international observers – relations between Caracas and Brasília are going through a continuous process of corrosion. The final straw was the refusal of the Lula administration to recognize Maduro’s victory officially. The same scenario applies to Nicaragua, governed by Daniel Ortega, which broke diplomatic relations with Brazil after repeated protests from Brasília over the human rights situation in the country. Nicaragua recently applied to join BRICS as well. How Brazil will behave towards their entry into the group, whether it will block them, and how this would influence Belarus’ accession should also be carefully analyzed at the summit in Kazan.

Whatever the lenses used to analyze the expansion of the BRICS group, it is apparent that this movement represents another sign that power continues its migration toward the East. Despite Brazil’s geographic location and close relationship with the US and Western Europe, the country tries to participate in this process while maintaining its economic and political interests. Given the above and despite all challenges, Belarus does have the potential to join the BRICS, if not after the summit in Kazan, then in the not so distant future. Such an achievement would benefit Lukashenka’s regime and further strengthen Russian influence over the country. Around thirty states have now applied to join the group, which would inevitably strengthen Chinese influence worldwide, as the country is responsible for the largest share of the group’s economy and foreign trade. This imbalance worries countries like Brazil, but at the same time, there is little Brasília can do to counter Beijing’s objectives. Brazil, however, can moderate the group’s language in its final statements as the Brazilian government tries to balance its cultural and geographic proximity to the West and its ambition to become an independent global player. From a European perspective, there is a particular understanding of this paradox. In recent days, the European Union has shown an unusual willingness to move forward with negotiations with the South American bloc Mercosur – of which Brazil is the leading member – to work towards the establishment of an association agreement. This move is being seen by many as an attempt to, at least, keep Brazil in a position closer to the West amid this process of growing global division represented by the BRICS expansion. However, how the country will manage the different interests of these players remains to be observed.

Angelo Biazus Marin Kramer is a PhD Candidate in Political Sciences at the University of Wroclaw.

“We suport the Belarusian Awakening’24” is a project co-financed by Solidarity Fund PL within the framework of Polish development cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland in the amount of PLN 230,000.

This publication expresses the views of the author only and cannot be identified with the official position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.

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belarus, Brazil, BRICS, China