Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has said that Russian leader Vladimir Putin will not be arrested in Brazil if he attends the Group of 20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro next year.
Lula, speaking to the Firstpost news show at the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Delhi on Saturday, said Putin would be invited to next year’s event.
He added that he himself planned to attend a BRICS bloc of developing nations meeting due in Russia before the Rio meeting.
“I believe that Putin can go easily to Brazil,” Lula said. “What I can say to you is that if I’m president of Brazil, and he comes to Brazil, there’s no way he will be arrested.”
The statement comes after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Putin in March, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.
I thought Brazil was a member of the ICC in just the way SA was
They are, but the country also depends a bit on Russia’s exports so the president tends to tip the scales in Putin’s side
International law is fairly optional. Will there be consequences if he doesn’t have Putin arrested? I doubt it.
Also, the South African president tried to make the same statement that he wouldn’t be arrested, but the local government said they would do it, so he was forced to uninvite Putin.
It will be interesting to see if a similar dynamic unfolds, but I think the internal politics of Brazil are rather different.
Brazil has a far stronger federal element to it right? Like the US