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Cyril Ramaphosa will use a Russian summit with African leaders to try to dissuade Vladimir Putin from attending next month’s Brics meeting in Johannesburg while under International Criminal Court indictment for war crimes.
Paul Mashatile, South Africa’s deputy president, told the News24 media organisation on Friday that “the Russians want Putin to come”, posing a problem for South Africa, which, as an ICC member state, would be obliged to arrest him on arrival.
“The president is speaking to President Putin directly on the ICC problem,” Mashatile’s spokesperson told the Financial Times.
Putin will host African leaders in St Petersburg next month for the first high-level forum on Russia’s economic ties to the continent since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It will also be the first significant international meeting in Russia since the June revolt by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner military group that shook the Kremlin.
Putin’s attendance at the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa summit later in August is yet to be officially confirmed. But it has created a dilemma for Ramaphosa’s government after the ICC issued a warrant for his arrest in March.
The court has accused Putin of the forced removal of Ukrainian children to Russia during the invasion.
South Africa’s predicament over the invitation has summed up the tensions between closer ties that Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress has forged with Russia, and the country’s commitment to principles of non-alignment and the rule of law in its foreign policy.
A South African inquiry is also due to report back to Ramaphosa on a US government allegation that South Africa allowed arms to be shipped to Russia from a Cape Town naval base last year. The government did not approve any arms exports to Russia over the period.
Ramaphosa “is going to the Russia-Africa summit later this month, so they will continue to talk”, Mashatile, who is tasked with contingency planning in South Africa’s government over the Putin invitation, told News24.
“We want to show him the challenges that we face because we are part of the Rome Statute [the treaty defining the court] and we can’t wiggle out of this.”
Diplomats and analysts have questioned whether Putin would have the courage to leave Russia for the Brics summit, given the fallout from the Wagner mutiny and possible instability in his absence.
But others believe that Putin could attend as a show of strength to fellow leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping. Few think that the Kremlin will confirm either way until the last moment.
Ramaphosa also spoke to Putin during a June mission by African leaders to Kyiv and Moscow to discuss principles for a peace plan and humanitarian objectives.
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