The global COVID-19 pandemic and an unexpected recession of a dangerous magnitude have provided strong reasons to look at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from three points of view: the SDGs as a victim of the recession; the SDGs as an opportunity for better coordination on the way out of recession; and the SDGs as an object of modernization for better adaptation to the realities on “the global ground”. The BRICS countries are, naturally, the primary group of interest for developing and implementing the SDGs on the global scale as a way of catching up.“Pandemic protocol” and additional indicators are proposed as an urgent update to several SDGs.