Putin to skip Johannesburg summit next month following ICC arrest warrant
Mike Brest
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Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend an economic summit next month in Johannesburg, South Africa, due to the International Criminal Court’s warrant for his arrest for the war in Ukraine.
The August summit will include Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — a group of developing economies referred to as BRICS — though the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Wednesday that Putin will not attend the BRICS summit after a “mutual agreement.”
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will represent his country at the summit, Ramaphosa’s office noted. Presidents from the other countries will attend as well.
The announcement ended months of speculation because South Africa is a signatory of the Rome Statute that created the ICC and would’ve been obligated to arrest him. While Moscow has disregarded the arrest warrant, Putin hasn’t traveled to any country that is a member of the ICC since the indictment was handed down in March.
The South African government’s main opposition party took the government to court in an attempt to compel them legally to arrest Putin if he set foot in the country.
“I must highlight, for the sake of transparency, that South Africa has obvious problems with executing a request to arrest and surrender President Putin,” Ramaphosa said in a court affidavit regarding the case. “Russia has made it clear that arresting its sitting president would be a declaration of war.”
Prior to Ramaphosa’s office’s announcement, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the allegation.
“No one has indicated anything to anyone,” he said, according to the Associated Press. “In this world, it is absolutely clear to everyone what an attempt to encroach on the head of the Russian state means. So there is no need to explain anything to anyone here.”
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The ICC announced the arrest warrant for Putin in mid-March, accusing him of being responsible for the thousands of children who have been forcibly deported to Russia, where they’ve undergone political “reeducation” training. It also issued an arrest warrant for Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the commissioner for children’s rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, whom they said also shared responsibility for the deportations.
Peskov said at the time they “consider the very formulation of the issue outrageous and unacceptable.”