Whether they celebrate Halloween in Russia, the ghost of Joe Biden is already there — because the real one either was not invited to the BRICS parley at Kazan this week or could not be bothered to finagle a way to send his top diplomat. Bit players on the international scene like President Xi, Prime Minister Modi, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres are there, however. 

President Biden is somewhere else physically and possibly mentally, while Secretary Blinken is off to friendly Saudi Arabia, carping about Gaza as he does. In the meantime, President Putin will be the one basking in the international spotlight. His scheduled meetings with the Indian and Communist Chinese leaders, as well as with Mr. Guterres, throw shade at an American president whose policy of isolating Russia following its invasion of Ukraine has not worked out as planned. 

The absence of Messrs. Biden and Blinken at the southern Russian city of Kazan, where guests were greeted with Russian karavai bread and Tatar chak-chak, a kind of fried dough, is of a piece with Vice President Harris’s no-show at the Al Smith Dinner in New York earlier this month. For many Democrats, opponents, international or domestic, are deplorables or villains to be ignored. 

On the global stage, at least, that approach amounts to ceding territory to one’s adversaries, even if it’s in just the domain of public perception. The United Nations may be less relevant to world affairs today than ever, but Mr. Guterres’s meeting with the ravenous Russ is not inconsequential — after all, it will be the first such meeting between the two since April 2022. 

The UN chief’s trip to Russia has sparked sharp criticism in Ukraine. It comes at a time, however, when President Zelensky’s widely touted “victory plan” has met with a lukewarm response from most quarters, including among members of the North Atlantic Treaty. Most recently the French defense minister, Sébastien Lecornu, is showing signs of Europe’s growing Ukraine fatigue, calling Mr. Zelensky’s plan the “beginning of a political path.”

For Mr. Guterres’ part, he will this week “reaffirm his well-known positions on the war in Ukraine and on the conditions for a just peace on the basis of the Charter and resolutions of the United Nations and international law,” his deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq, stated. Mr. Guterres, despite few if any tangible diplomatic successes to his credit, likes to position himself as a mediator. 

In February, he did say that the annexation of Ukrainian territories has “no place in the modern world” — but that didn’t stop him from flying to Russia to have a word with Mr. Putin.

There is power in publicity, and for the moment the Kremlin is ahead of the game. With the three-day BRICS summit at Kazan, Mr. Putin wants to show that he is not isolated internationally despite his war against Ukraine and despite Western sanctions against Russia. 

A Kremlin foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, called the summit “the largest foreign policy event ever held” by Russia, with 36 countries attending and more than 20 of them represented by heads of state. The alliance that initially included Brazil, Russia, India, Communist China, and South Africa has expanded rapidly to include Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Malaysia have all formally applied to become members.

Mr. Putin will hold about 20 bilateral meetings on the sidelines and conferred on Tuesday with Messrs. Xi, Modi, and President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa. Messrs. Xi and Putin already announced a “no-limits” partnership, weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. They met twice this year, at Beijing in May and at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kazakhstan in July.

Welcoming Xi, Putin described the relations between Moscow and Beijing as “one of the main stabilizing factors on the world arena.” He vowed to “expand coordination on all multilateral forums for the sake of global stability and a fair world order.”

Behind the platitudes and photo opps, money matters loom large. 

Observers see the BRICS summit as part of the Kremlin’s efforts to showcase support from the so-called Global South amid spiraling tensions with the West while expanding economic and financial ties.

Proposed projects include the creation of a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network SWIFT and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners.

The Russian president’s first meeting at Kazan was with the former president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff. After his meeting with her, Mr. Putin said that “Increasing settlements in local currencies allows us to reduce debt servicing fees, increase the financial independence of BRICS member countries, minimize geopolitical risks, and free economic development from politics, as much as possible in today’s world.”

Ms. Rousseff is president of the New Development Bank, which was created by the first five BRICS states about a decade ago. Its headquarters are a long way from Moscow, at Shanghai.