Will Putin Attend the BRICS Summit in Late August?

June 5, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are scheduled to hold their next annual summit meeting from Aug. 22-24 in Johannesburg, South Africa, but questions have arisen about whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend, because there is an outstanding ICC arrest warrant against him based on totally spurious charges. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has only stated that Russia would be represented “at the appropriate level.”

The whole ICC arrest warrant is a gambit designed to create security problems for Putin, along with the constant threats from Kiev authorities that he must be overthrown before there can be peace, as well as periodic calls for his outright elimination.

There has been some press speculation that the venue of the summit might be moved to China, to accommodate Putin’s very real security concerns. However, Indian newspaper The Tribune reported on June 3 that “the BRICS Foreign Ministers are understood to have decided to stand by the original decision of holding the summit meeting in South Africa.... The resolve to hold the summit in South Africa was strengthened by the unequivocal support from its ruling party—African National Congress (ANC). Asked by a reporter about the arrest warrant against Putin, ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula responded angrily:

“ ‘Putin is the head of a state, do you think that a head of state can just be arrested anywhere? How many criminal activities has your country committed in Iraq? How many have you arrested for crime in Afghanistan and Libya?’ ”