The post features three images: one of Putin holding what appears to be a banknote and another two showing the front and back of a money bill with a face value of “100” units and flags of different countries.
The claim was also shared here on Instagram. Similar versions of the claim without the image were found on X (here, here and here).
The bloc held its 16th summit in Russia’s Kazan from October 22-24, 2024 with representatives from 36 countries and six international organisations. BRICS now has 10 member-states in total after the admission of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE in January (archived here).
A few hours before the summit closed, BRICS released a 33-page document titled “Kazan Declaration”. The document outlines the bloc’s vision for global governance, economic development, and international cooperation (archived here).
However, the claim that Putin presented a “banknote of a single BRICS currency” during the gathering is misleading.
No currency launch
AFP Fact Check read through the 134 line items of the Kazan Declaration. No resolution was made on a unified currency aside from calls for an alternative payment system that aims to allow member-states to run cross-border trades in local currencies.
“We encourage the strengthening of correspondent banking networks within BRICS and enabling settlements in local currencies in line with BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative (BCBPI), which is voluntary and nonbinding, and look forward to further discussions in this area, including in the BRICS Payment Task Force,” the declaration reads in part.
AFP Fact Check also conducted a reverse image search on the image of Putin holding the purported banknote.
The results led to an album page containing the official pictures from the summit’s dedicated website (archived here). Among them is the same picture – and additional images from different angles – of Putin holding the claimed banknote.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin after the meeting of the heads of BRICS delegations in an expanded format as part of the XVI BRICS summit in Kazan,” reads the caption. There is no mention, though, of what was in Putin’s hand.
AFP covered the BRICS summit and captured the moment Putin was handed the “banknote” by an attendee on the second day. Putin then held it towards Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a lighthearted gesture.
Alexander NEMENOVPOOL
Local media reported that while answering questions about the “banknote” from journalists at the summit, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said the president was given the symbolic currency by “one of our people – either from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry or someone else – they printed this quasi-money” (archived here).
The “banknote” was described by Russian state news agencies (here and here) as being “mock” or “symbolic” (archived here and here).
Russia was axed from the global financial messaging system Swift following a series of sanctions imposed in response to its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 (archived here).
During the summit, Putin accused the US of using the dollar “as a weapon” but he did not announce a global alternative to the greenback, said Agathe Demarais, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (archived here).
“No currency has been unveiled at the BRICS summit. What Russia is trying to push for is a financial system connecting the central banks of BRICS countries so they could exchange digital currencies,” Demarais told AFP Fact Check in an email.
Recurring claim
Claims about the unveiling of a new BRICS currency are not new.
During the 2023 BRICS summit in South Africa, photos of the purported currency in both banknote and crypto form were widely shared online (such as here, here and here) and described as official legal tender for the member states of the bloc.
This was false and several fact-checking organisations debunked the posts (such as here, here and here).
However, the images of the purported banknote that circulated in 2023 bear a resemblance to the specimen Putin was photographed with in Kazan — though the one in 2023 was 100 note bill while the 2024 is 50.
Days after the 2023 summit, the Russian ambassador to South Africa, Ilya Rogachev, presented the head of the United Arabic Emirates (UAE) diplomatic mission Mahash Saeed Alhameli “with a symbolic banknote” of a BRICS single currency with a face value of 100 units (archived here).
The souvenir was presented during a reception at the UAE embassy in Pretoria — South Africa’s administrative capital — to acknowledge the country’s status as one of the new member states of BRICS.
Rogachev reportedly said the note was made in Russia.
