Russia in Global Affairs

The 20th century taught states how to compete over finite resources. The 21st century may reward those capable of organizing renewable abundance. Oil shaped the geopolitics of the past, biomass may shape the geoeconomics of the future. The strategic question for BRICS is therefore no longer whether agricultural waste has value, but whether it is prepared to recognize that value before others do.

The proposal for a BRICS Card is not a grand geopolitical declaration. It is a practical response to a real and growing need. The world has changed. Patterns of human mobility and cross-border economic activity have diversified. Financial infrastructure must evolve accordingly—not through confrontation with existing systems, but through addition of new, complementary mechanisms.

The opportunity is rooted in Russia’s substantial balances in Indian rupees accumulated through energy exports, currently underutilized. What may appear at first glance as a financial constraint is, in fact, a latent investment resource that can be used to transform bilateral cooperation into a long-term strategic framework generating real economic value.