Vladimir Putin is hosting the summit of the BRICS countries in Moscow, but he will not go to the G20 summit in November in Brazil, he announced, referring to the arrest warrant against him from the ICC.
Photo: KEYSTONE/AP/Alexander Zemlianichenko
Vladimir Putin indicated on Friday that he did not intend to go to the G20 summit in Brazil, scheduled for November 18-19. He does not want to ‘disrupt’ this summit while he is under arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC).
‘We fully understand that even excluding the CPI factor, the entire discussion will only be about that. And we will actually disrupt the work of the G20. What’s the point? We are adults,’ the Russian president said during a meeting with foreign journalists, on the sidelines of the summit of the Brics countries which he is hosting on Friday in Moscow.
Mr. Putin has been the subject of an arrest warrant since March 2023 on suspicion of illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
The member countries of the ICC, as is the case for Brazil, are therefore theoretically required to arrest him if he goes to their territory.
Vladimir Putin, however, was not arrested at the beginning of September in Mongolia, a member state of the International Criminal Court, where he was received with great fanfare.
The ICC, whose headquarters is in the Netherlands, recalled that its member countries had the ‘obligation’ to arrest individuals targeted by an arrest warrant. But, in reality, possible sanctions are essentially limited to a verbal admonishment.
The Kremlin, which does not recognize the ICC, has always firmly rejected the accusations brought by this court against the Russian president.
Mr. Putin has, however, taken care for more than a year and a half to avoid certain trips abroad, for example skipping the Brics summit in South Africa in August 2023, then the G20 summit in India in September of the same year.
/ATS
World
