(MAGNITOGORSK, TASS/GNP/20th July, 2019) The summits of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and BRICS will be held in St. Petersburg, while Chelyabinsk, the city initially designated to host them, will instead accommodate a number of other events within Russia’s chairmanship in these organizations, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday at a meeting with acting Chelyabinsk Region governor Aleksei Teksler.
“We planned [to hold] two large international events in Chelyabinsk: the SCO and BRICS [summits]. We have already assumed chairmanship in one of this organizations [the SCO] and will assume chairmanship in the other one next year. But due to the increased number of participants of these events we have to hold them in two cities. We will hold a number of events in Chelyabinsk, but the summit itself will be held in St. Petersburg,” Putin said.
He added that the funds, initially allocated for Chelyabinsk to prepare for the summits, will be used toward its urban development.
Teksler, in turn, thanked him for maintaining the budgetary allocations to Chelyabinsk, saying they will be invested in social welfare, construction of roads, refurbishment of the airport and other buildings.
“I believe we will host another state-level international event in the future. The important thing now is that Chelyabinsk will remain one of the Russian chairmanship platforms in the SCO and BRICS. We will host almost thirty events and thousands of people. It is important that funds are maintained, and we will indeed invest them in developing the infrastructure, in fact, we already do,” he added.
Russia assumed chairmanship in the SCO in June. The SCO, established in 2001, initially included China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as permanent members. India along with Pakistan were granted status of the organization’s full members in June 2017. The group’s key goals include cooperation in the area of international security and counterterrorism.
The BRICS group, founded in 2006, comprises five major emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. In 2019, the chairmanship of the group is held by Brazil.