- Saturday, July 27, 2024
Putin did not attend the just concluded BRICS summit in South Africa as the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him over alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
By: Shubham Ghosh
RUSSIAN president Vladimir Putin is set to skip the G20 summit which will be held in New Delhi, India, on September 9 and 10, sources in the Kremlin said on Friday (25).
Russia’s official Tass news agency quoted Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson of the Kremlin, as saying, “No, the president has no such plans.”
The 70-year-old Putin, who is serving as the president of Russia continuously since 2012 after a four-year hiatus, did not attend the just concluded BRICS summit in Johannesburg in South Africa and addressed it virtually after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him in March this year over alleged war crimes in Ukraine. South Africa is an ICC signatory and was expected to help in arresting the Russian president if he was present on its soil.
Russia was represented by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov while the other four member-states had their heads of government present on the occasion.
Peskov also said the format of the Russian president’s participation would be determined later.
Bloomberg quoted Russia’s Interfax news service the Kremlin said Putin has a busy schedule.
“Putin has a “busy schedule,” and his main focus at the moment is prosecuting Russia’s war in Ukraine, Peskov told the media on Friday, according to the Interfax news service,” the Bloomberg report said.
The Russian president has not left Russia much since Moscow launched military attack against Ukraine, leading to an international backlash and unprecedented sanctions by the US and its allies in the west. He also did not go to last year’s G20 summit in Indonesia.
