Brazil’s President Lula has rescinded his personal pledge that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be jailed if he attends the G20 conference in Rio de Janeiro next year.
Putin did not attend this year’s event in New Delhi, India, to avoid potential political tensions and the prospect of criminal imprisonment under an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant.
Brazil is an ICC member but President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has raised eyebrows after telling Indian news network Firstpost: “If I’m the president of Brazil and if he comes to Brazil, there’s no way that he will be arrested.”
But earlier today, he told reporters: “I don’t know if Brazil’s justice will detain him. It’s the judiciary that decides, it’s not the government.”
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Putin has declined to attend recent international events, forcing him to send Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to New Delhi for the September 9-10 G20 meeting, despite the fact that India is not a signatory to the ICC.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin in March on the basis of a war crime accusation of illegally deporting Ukrainian children.
The Kremlin denies the allegations, claiming that the order against Putin is “void.”
The G20 nations approved a resolution on Saturday that avoided blaming Moscow for the Ukraine crisis but called on other states to desist from using force to seize territory.
The next summit is scheduled for November 2024 in Rio de Janeiro, and Lula expressed hope that “by then, the war will be over.”
However, he questioned Brazil’s membership in the war crimes tribunal, saying that “emerging countries often sign things that are detrimental to them.”
“I want to know why we are members but not the United States, not Russia, not India, not China,” Lula said.
“I’m not saying I’m going to leave the court, I just want to know why Brazil is a signatory.”