Brazil’s Lula backs down on pledge Putin won’t be arrested if he visits
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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attended the 2023 G-20 summit in New Delhi, which was held on Sept 9-10.
PHOTO: AFP
NEW DELHI – Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva backed down from a pledge that Russian leader Vladimir Putin would be safe to travel to the 2024 Group of 20 (G-20) summit in Brazil without fear of arrest.
Mr Lula said the issue is up to his country’s judiciary.
“If Putin decides to go to Brazil, it will be the courts that decide whether or not he will be arrested, not me,” Mr Lula told a news conference in New Delhi on Monday following this year’s G-20 summit.
Mr Lula attended 2023’s G-20 summit in the Indian capital, which was held over the weekend.
On Saturday, he had said in an interview with news show First Post that there is “no way” Mr Putin would be arrested if he attended the summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Mr Lula added there is a need to review his country’s accession to the International Criminal Court (ICC) when nations like the United States, China and India have not done so.
“I want to know why the US, India and China didn’t sign the ICC treaty and why our country signed it,” he said.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Mr Putin in March.
The court accused him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.
Russia has denied that its forces have engaged in war crimes, or forcibly taken Ukrainian children.
Brazil is a signatory to the Rome Statute, which led to the founding of the ICC.
Mr Putin has skipped the last two G-20 summits in Bali and New Delhi, and Russia has been represented by its foreign minister, Mr Sergey Lavrov. REUTERS
