Saudi Arabia and Turkey refuse invitation to joins BRICS — 9 other nations added instead.

Russia, in the final days of its BRICS chairmanship, has succeeded in recruiting nine new partner countries for the geopolitical bloc but has failed to secure deals with key targets such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Despite months of effort from Russian leaders, the Saudi and Turkish governments are both still stalling their decisions on invitations to affiliate with the bloc, in which Russia and China play leading roles.

Turkey’s decision has been closely watched because it would have been the first member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to be associated with BRICS.

The BRICS group has emerged as a rising rival to the Western-dominated G7 group of countries in recent years. The nine-member bloc, which represents almost half of the world’s population and about a quarter of the global economy, is working on a new global payments system to bypass Western sanctions in the banking sector.

The group’s name is an acronym for its earliest members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It expanded last year to include Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates.