BRICS economies feeling, countering West’s pressure - Russian diplomat

MOSCOW, March 25. /TASS/. The BRICS five major emerging economies - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - are feeling the Western pressure and are countering it by joint efforts, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s special envoy, Vadim Lukov, said on Wednesday. "We started feeling the pressure of our Western partners from the first steps in BRICS," the diplomat said. "Behind our back, the Western colleagues in two words laid down their personal testament: BRICS is either impossible or reactionary," he said. The diplomat said Russia and the whole BRICS bloc is under pressure in order not to allow consolidation on such areas as the reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Ukraine. Ahead of the July 2014 BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, there were "demarches" that the word Ukraine must not be said out loud at the event, Lukov said, adding: "But this did not happen." "I think that our Western partners will not give up these attempts," the diplomat said. "The dynamics of the BRICS development is so that it will not be stopped by all these phrases and wordings. So we are feeling and are countering this pressure together with the BRICS partners," he said. The BRICS nations have met annually at formal summits since 2010. Russia, which currently chairs the BRICS group, will host the next summit in Ufa in July 2015. Read more