Unlike Brazil’s Group of 20 summit, no one was late or missing when leaders of the world’s major emerging-market nations gathered for a family photo Sunday in Rio de Janeiro — at least not accidentally.
Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, hosting the two-day meeting of BRICS countries, took center stage, flanked by South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa and India’s Narendra Modi on either side. Other representatives from the newly expanded bloc fanned out from there, with the most controversial international attendees — the foreign ministers of Russia and Iran — on either flank.
It was a sharp contrast from a chaotic family photo against the same backdrop — Rio’s iconic Sugarloaf Mountain — in November, when the absence of then-U.S. President Joe Biden, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau epitomized the disarray that permeated Brazil’s Group of 20 meetings.
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