Government in Dialogue With the Expert Community: BRICS Expert Council-Russia Holds Strategy Session in Moscow

The BRICS Expert Council-Russia recently held a strategy session in Moscow dedicated to the topic of "BRICS' Expert Potential for Meeting Universal Challenges: A Dialogue With Federal Agencies." The event brought leading experts and analysts together with officials from key Russian Federation ministries and agencies.

Sergey Ryabkov, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation and Russia’s BRICS Sherpa, opened the session. In his remarks, the senior diplomat highlighted the Expert Council’s growing role as a vehicle for solidifying strategic partnerships, not only within BRICS itself but also in the greater global arena.

The Russian deputy foreign minister also underscored the Expert Council’s role in coordinating cooperative efforts among the BRICS member states across all key areas of the association’s work.

The BRICS Expert Council-Russia has been operating in a systematic, regular manner since 2024, consistently unlocking and stepping up the association’s collective potential as a source of expert analysis and advice. As Victoria Panova, Head of the Expert Council and Russia’s Women 20 (W20) Sherpa, emphasized, over the entire period since its inception the Council has pursued an ambitious operational agenda, which has included the preparation and publication of more than 70 expert materials, the presentation of more than 20 in-depth reports, and the holding of approximately 80 separate events.

Victoria Panova also stressed that, since the BRICS Expert Council-Russia’s work has become more regularized, those events that had previously been conducted strictly as part of the specialized BRICS expert agenda are now, starting from this year, evolving more and more into sustainable popular formats aimed at heightening awareness and boosting engagement among the member states’ diverse populations. The topics covered by such initiatives and their geographical footprint have expanded significantly, including conducting various educational lectures and launching regular specialized podcasts featuring lively discussions among experts, diplomats, and political figures of critical issues pertaining to economic, scientific, and cultural cooperation. The new formats are designed to make the BRICS agenda more accessible, understandable, and relevant, including as part of meetings with representatives of the newest member states and the association’s partners.

Among the key achievements have been the geographical expansion of the expert community through recruiting talented specialists from Russia’s regions and other countries, which has helped generate a comprehensive analytical base for formulating joint solutions. The Civil BRICS Council format has proven particularly successful. It has become an effective platform for conducting a dialogue among the non-profit sector, the business community, and government agencies, which in turn has enabled integrating the needs, interests, and concerns of civil society into the overall BRICS agenda and ensuring operational continuity and consistency in work being carried out in key areas.

Furthermore, educational projects and initiatives for developing human resources potential are occupying an important place in the work of the Council. In particular, the Council has placed special emphasis on developing its flagship educational project, titled BRICS International School: New Generation. Its mission is to promote in-depth study of the member countries to foster better mutual understanding across BRICS, while encouraging the exchange of best practices, and building a global community of young experts and leaders with a shared vision of working collaboratively in the emerging multipolar world order.

The Council’s analytical activity stands out as a separate category all of its own, including the work of drafting the latest edition of BRICS Cooperation Progress According to the BTTC Indicator System. This critical report is designed to provide an objective assessment of cooperation trends in various fields and to identify promising areas for future cooperative initiatives.

Sergey Karaganov, Academic Supervisor of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs (WEIA) at HSE University and Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, set forth a strategic vision for further development of the Expert Track. The distinguished international relations expert presented a major BRICS Expert Council-Russia report titled A Renewed BRICS for a Polycentric World: From Global Chaos to Orderly Multipolarity, which was based on the results of a situational analysis exercise. In his remarks, Dr Karaganov placed the accent squarely on the need to create permanent platforms for fostering informal intellectual dialogue, a sort of club of diverse scholars and thought leaders from across the international community.

Proceeding logically from the strategic block, the next report was presented by Dmitry Suslov, Expert in the Country Analysis Working Group at the BRICS Expert Council-Russia and Deputy Director of the Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies (CCEIS) under the WEIA at HSE University. He outlined several concrete scenarios for the further growth of BRICS under the current conditions of global transformation and ongoing conflicts, as well as practical approaches to reinforcing the association’s role as an institution of global governance.

The next speaker was Alexey Lavrov, Chief Expert in the Section for Financial Cooperation and International Monetary and Financial Systems at the BRICS Expert Council-Russia, and Professor and Director of the Centre for Budgetary Technologies of the Institute for Public Administration and Governance at HSE University. His report, titled Managing Public Finances: The Russian Experience and Developing Best Practices in the BRICS Countries, covered key issues on the financial agenda. In particular, Mr Lavrov presented various approaches to enhancing the efficiency of budgetary processes and financial planning tools that can be adapted within the framework of bilateral government-to-government cooperation. Among the promising areas for joint initiatives, the expert named data sharing on best practices for financial oversight, developing common methodological recommendations for programme-related budget planning, and creating platforms for hosting regular dialogues among the fiscal authorities of the BRICS member states.

Special attention at the strategy session was devoted to the role of the non-profit sector in the social, economic, and political life of the association’s member states. Irina Kostetskaya, Coordinator of the Civic Track at the BRICS Expert Council-Russia, presented a research study titled The Non-Profit Sector in the BRICS Countries: Current Structure and Development Trends. Drafted with support from the Civil BRICS Council, the report analyses the institutional environment for the activities of non-profit organizations (NPO) across the BRICS countries, and the role of non-profits in implementing joint initiatives, as well as promising areas for partnership and the existing challenges and barriers facing NPOs in each of the countries individually.

The strategy session organizers noted that the ensuing dialogue served as an important stage in the process of strengthening practical interaction and cooperation between BRICS-associated expert communities and Russia’s state institutions. Further plans call for using the practical takeaways from the strategy session to prepare future joint events and to formulate a consensus view on synchronized approaches to tackling and resolving multifaceted universal tasks.