Putin suddenly backtracks
In November, Vladimir Putin is scheduled to attend the G20 summit in Brazil… a high-risk trip that could result in his arrest.
The Russian president is subject of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC). He's accused of playing a role in the deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children.
As a signatory to the Rome Statute, Brazil is obliged to arrest anyone under an ICC arrest warrant. Ukrainian Prosecutor General, Andriy Kostin, therefore expects the Brazilian authorities to act accordingly. He recently stated: “Given the information that Putin may attend the G20 summit in Brazil, I would like to reiterate that the Brazilian authorities, as a State Party to the Rome Statute, have an obligation to arrest him if he dares to go there.”
U-turn
Finally, and against all expectations, the Kremlin leader stated that he didn't intend to travel to Brazil on November 18 and 19 to attend the G20 summit. Given the ICC arrest warrant, he said he didn't want to “disrupt” the event.
“We understand perfectly well that even if we exclude the ICC factor, the whole discussion will be about that. And we will in fact disrupt the work of the G20. What’s the point? We're adults,” he said.
(MH with Manon Pierre - Source: Midi Libre/Reuters - Picture: Picture by tatarstan.ru via WikiCommons under licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International)