Politics doesn’t decide that
Lula collects testimony about Putin’s arrest
September 11, 2023, 10:28 a.m
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Brazil’s president is making waves with a statement about Vladimir Putin. He doesn’t want to have him arrested if he visits his country. At the G20 summit in India he is now softening this statement. The decision would lie with the judiciary, so Lula.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has backed down on his security guarantee for Russian President Vladimir Putin if he visits Brazil. “I don’t know if Brazil’s judiciary will imprison him. It is the judiciary that decides, it is not the government,” Lula told reporters in New Delhi. At the same time, he questioned his country’s membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“Emerging countries often sign things that are disadvantageous for them,” said Brazil’s head of state. Lula assured that he didn’t want to withdraw his membership, but “I want to know why we are members, but not the United States, not Russia, not India, not China.”
Lula said on Sunday on the sidelines of the G20 summit that Putin was not at risk of arrest despite an international arrest warrant issued for him in Brazil. “If I am the President of Brazil and if he comes to Brazil, there is no way he will be arrested,” he assured.
Putin avoids trips abroad
Lula caused a stir with his statement. The International Criminal Court (ICC), based in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant against Putin last March. The Russian president has avoided international meetings since the start of the war of aggression in Ukraine. Putin also did not attend the summit in India over the weekend, even though the country, unlike Brazil, has never joined the ICC.
On Saturday, the G20 participants adopted a statement in which Moscow was not explicitly condemned for the war in Ukraine. Instead, all countries were urged not to use force to seize territory.
The next G20 meeting will take place in November 2024 in the Brazilian metropolis of Rio de Janeiro. Lula said he hoped “the war will be over by then.”