Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend next month’s summit of BRICS leaders in Johannesburg, avoiding the risk of possible arrest on a warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes.
The decision is the most dramatic example to date of the impact of the ICC’s warrant on Putin. It has forced the Russian leader to weigh the potential risk to his liberty of travel abroad — even to friendly states like South Africa, which had faced a diplomatic dilemma over how to handle a possible visit by a leader it was bound by treaty obligations to detain.
The U.S. and its allies have sought to make Putin into a pariah over his invasion, but many countries in the global south have refused to joint sanctions against Moscow. South Africa has adopted a nonaligned stance toward the conflict, a position that has drawn harsh criticism from some of the nation’s largest trading partners, including the U.S. and the European Union.