Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be detained if he participates in the next G20 summit, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro in 2024, his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, assured this Sunday.
Putin is the subject of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant issued in March on suspicion of war crimes for the deportation of Ukrainian children.
Since then he has not traveled to all countries and has missed international meetings such as the G20 summit, which ended today in New Delhi, where he was represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Lula da Silva guaranteed, in an interview with Indian television, that Putin will be invited to visit Rio de Janeiro.
“I can say that if I am president of Brazil and he comes to Brazil, there is no reason for him to be arrested,” Lula said, quoted by the French agency AFP.
Moscow denies the ICC allegations and says the arrest warrant against the Russian leader is “null and void.”
The alleged crimes were committed as part of the war that Russia began with the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Brazil is a signatory to the 1998 Rome Statute, the international treaty that led to the creation of the ICC in 2002, meaning it should, in theory, detain the Russian president if he enters Brazilian territory.
Lula recalled that the leaders of the BRICS, a bloc of emerging countries that includes Brazil and Russia, will meet in Russian territory before the next G20 summit.
“Everyone is going to the BRICS summit, so I hope they come to the G20 summit in Brazil. In Brazil they will feel an atmosphere of peace,” Lula said.
“We like to take care of people. That’s why I think Putin can easily come to Brazil,” he added.
The G20 brings together Germany, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, South Korea, the United States, France, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
The African Union was admitted to the group on Saturday.
Source: TSF
