Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the summit of the BRICS group of nations in South Africa in August “by mutual agreement”, South Africa’s presidency said on Wednesday.
“By mutual agreement, President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation will not attend the summit, but the Russian Federation will be represented by Foreign Minister Mr [Sergey] Lavrov,” Vincent Magwenya, a spokesman for President Cyril Ramaphosa, said in a statement.
South Africa faced a dilemma in hosting the summit because, as a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March for alleged war crimes, it would theoretically be required to arrest him if he were to attend.
The dilemma led to intense debate in South Africa and the West about whether the warrant would be executed, given South Africa’s stance of neutrality on the war in Ukraine and Pretoria’s historic ties to the Kremlin.
In 2015, South Africa also failed to arrest then-Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, who was also the subject of an ICC warrant.
The leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa will attend the summit, the presidency said.
BRICS, a bloc of emerging economic powers comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China was formed in 2019 as BRIC. South Africa joined the following year after an invitation from China, expanding the group.
Ethiopia, Iran and Argentina have also applied to join the bloc.
@o_d @C4RCOSA I’m replying to your nonsense replies propping up the BS article in the first place. There also happens to be plenty of data to support that Russia is not flourishing, and is legit suffering from sanctions. No shortage of evidence there. From fielding tanks out of the 50s, to their private and commercial air fleets… you’d have to be ignorant to claim blue skies. You’re spouting the trumpian BS of “people are saying” while claiming other people have no source
@o_d @C4RCOSA that’s not to say they are on the verge of total collapse either. But def not roses and sunshine. Sorry I couldn’t previously add more as mastodon limits character count and has no simple down vote mechanism. It’s a bit weird seeing replies with no mention of what they’re replying to, spread across the space with equal prominence as original posts. At times it feels like mastodon has no concept of threads and this everything is noise compared to signal