"We Would Be Happy If Putin Didn’t Come": South African Deputy President

South African Deputy President Paul Mashatile has told the Mail & Guardian that Russia has rejected a request from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa for the country to be represented at the BRICS summit by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov instead of President Vladimir Putin, as reported by kommersant.ru.

Mashatile noted that negotiations on this matter are still ongoing. He added that India and Brazil have rejected the option of moving the summit to China.

On July 11, the press secretary of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, responded to a question about whether Putin is ready to personally attend the summit, stating that the president has not yet decided on the format of his participation in the BRICS summit scheduled for August.

The BRICS summit will be held from August 22 to 24 in Johannesburg. South Africa, which has signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), will be obliged to arrest Putin if he arrives in the country.

“We understand that we are constrained by the Rome Statute, but we cannot invite someone and then arrest them. You can understand the dilemma we are facing: we would be happy if he didn’t come,” Mashatile said.

In March, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children's Rights in Russia. According to the court, they are “presumably responsible for war crimes related to the illegal deportation of children from Ukraine.”