By Paul Jouvenet, legal expert and essayist – Eurasia Business News, July 21, 2023

Russia will be represented at the BRICS summit next August by Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister. Earlier in South Africa, they said that Moscow rejected this option. President Vladimir Putin’s presence at the meeting was complicated by the issuance of an arrest warrant by the ICC and South Africa’s ratification of the Rome Statute.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not go to the BRICS summit in South Africa, Moscow will be represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, according to a statement on the website of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

“By mutual agreement, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, will not attend the summit, but the Russian Federation will be represented by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Sergey Lavrov,” it said.

Later on July 20, the press secretary of the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed that Vladimir Putin would take part in the summit via video-conference.

The BRICS summit will be held on August 22-24 in Johannesburg. It will be attended by the leaders of Brazil, India, China and South Africa.

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South African Vice President Paul Machatile previously said that Cyril Ramaphosa was trying to personally convince Vladimir Putin not to come to the summit. This was due to the fact that South Africa ratified the Rome Statute, the founding document of the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant against the Russian president in March 2023. Thus, South Africa must legally comply with the decisions of the ICC, but such a step would be unthinkable for the country, since it invited the Russian president to the BRICS summit, Mashatile emphasized.

The day before, the South-African official said that Moscow had rejected the request of the South African side that Russia be represented at the summit by Lavrov.

Recently, South African President Ramaphosa said that “it would be a reckless, unconstitutional and illegal exercise of the powers vested in the government to declare war on Russia by arresting President Putin.” 

It was also proposed to hold a summit in China or Vladimir Putin’s participation online. The first option was rejected by India and Brazil, said Paul Machatile.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and Russian children’s ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova in March 2023, calling them responsible for the “illegal deportation of the population (children) from the occupied territories of Ukraine to the Russian Federation” since the beginning of full-scale hostilities on February 24, 2022. Russia, which has not ratified the Rome Statute, considers the International Criminal court’s decision legally null and void. The Kremlin expressed the hope that South Africa and other partner countries “will not be guided by illegal decisions” of the ICC.

On May 30, high-ranking officials in South Africa were trying to convince President Cyril Ramaphosa to move the summit to China, The Daily Telegraph reported. According to the newspaper, in this way they want to avoid discussions about the demand of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

The BRICS summit is scheduled for August 22-24. It will be attended by the leaders of South Africa, Brazil, India, and China. This will be the first face-to-face BRICS summit since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

BRICS countries are working on the issue of creating a new international currency based on the currencies of BRICS member states, which can become a new reserve currency, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the June 2022 summit in Beijing.

The BRICS countries aims at reducing their dependence on the US dollar and to mitigate US influence over their economies. Some proposals put forward by BRICS countries include using their currencies as reserve currencies, in the SDR basket, or constructing a new supranational currency based on gold and commodities. The fundamental reason for developing an SDR-like basket currency for BRICS nations is to address the US dollar hegemony and build their sphere of influence and unit of currency within that sphere.

Since 2010, the BRICS have brought together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. All these countries are gold producers.

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© Copyright 2023 – Paul Jouvenet, legal expert and essayist.