Putin Urges UN Security Council Expansion at BRICS Summit in New Delhi

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for enlarging the United Nations Security Council to give greater representation to Asia, Africa and Latin America, arguing that the move would strengthen the body's functioning.

Addressing the BRICS summit in New Delhi, Putin said the emergence of a multipolar world order was encountering resistance from states he described as still thinking in colonial terms — dividing the world into a privileged sphere and those left outside it. He accused such countries of trying to hold back rising competitors.

He listed tariffs, sanctions, economic pressure and coercion, interference in other nations' internal affairs and the use of force among the methods he said were being deployed. According to Putin, old points of tension are being inflamed while new conflicts and divisions are being created, weakening the wider system of international relations and eroding the effectiveness of multilateral institutions.

Against that backdrop, he said Russia places central importance on preserving and reinforcing the role of the United Nations in world affairs. The UN Charter, he added, remains a foundation of international law, despite efforts by some countries to substitute it with a rules-based order of unclear origin.

Putin said Moscow would keep working with its BRICS partners to improve how the UN operates, and that widening the Security Council to include Asian, African and Latin American representation would serve that aim.

He also argued that reform of global economic governance is overdue, pointing to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. These institutions, he said, were set up under very different political and economic conditions and have found it difficult to adjust as economic activity increasingly shifts toward emerging markets.

Even so, Putin described the three bodies as important channels for dialogue among the world's major economies, and said it is essential for BRICS countries to coordinate more closely within them.