Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Gevorg Mirzayan
[REGNUM] Vladimir Putin will not attend the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, which will be held August 22-24. This was officially announced in the administration of the President of South Africa, the nominal host of the summit.
“As part of the bilateral agreement, Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the summit. Russia will be represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov,” said Vincent Magvenia, spokesman for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. “President Putin has decided to participate in the BRICS summit via videoconferencing. It will be a full-fledged participation,” Dmitry Peskov commented on the situation.
“In recent months, there has been an extensive practice of summits in the format of video conferences. Two meetings of the SCO have already been held this way. In the context of Western hybrid aggression in Taiwan and Ukraine, the leaders of Russia and China are not always able to travel to third countries and speak via video link. At the BRICS summit, Russia uses this practice,” Nikita Mendkovich , head of the Eurasian Analytical Club, explains to IA Regnum.
Obviously, the reason for Putin's refusal to travel was not so much security issues, as some Russian political scientists are already writing, but legal restrictions. Recall that back in March, the international criminal court in The Hague issued a warrant for the arrest of the Russian president - and this warrant must be executed by all countries that are members of the ICC (that is, signatories of the so-called Rome Statute). South Africa is one of them.
Yes, President Ramaphosa initially made it clear that he was not going to arrest the Russian leader, simply because it means declaring war on Moscow. “In this world, it is absolutely clear to everyone what an attempt to encroach on the head of the Russian state means. Therefore, there is no need to explain anything to anyone here,” said Dmitry Peskov.
Yes, South Africa has already ignored the decision of the ICC once, for example, when it hosted the leader of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, in 2015. However, the importance of that incident is incomparable to the current one.
“The country is facing an extremely difficult dilemma. Or choose Russia - and then withdraw from the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court, striking a blow to their ties with the West. Or make an open choice in favor of the West and withdraw the invitation to Putin, dealing a blow to relations with Moscow. Neither one nor the other is in the interests of South Africa. Pretoria does not want to quarrel either with the West, or with Russia and China,” Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the HSE Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies, explains to IA Regnum.
It would seem that this is the problem of South Africa. Russia needed Putin's physical presence at the summit, both from a reputational point of view and to conduct various negotiations with external partners behind the scenes of the event. Therefore, Moscow could well get into the bottle and force the South African partners to decide. Either invite or don't invite.
And, most likely, this choice would have been in favor of Moscow - the South African president would not risk withdrawing the invitation to Vladimir Putin, much less ordering the arrest of the Russian leader upon arrival in Johannesburg. As a result, Moscow would win a short-term propaganda victory, proving that the Rome Statute is worthless, that there is no trace of Russia's isolation.
Instead, however, the Kremlin decided to spare Cyril Ramaphosa the choice by simply canceling the Russian president's physical visit.
AN INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE
Some might call it a mistake. The Kremlin's deflection in the face of international pressure. However, in reality this decision is a tactical concession for the sake of strategic gain. “Today, relations with the countries of the world majority are one of the highest priorities for Russia. Relations with the West will be bad for years to come, and in this situation it is the states of the world majority that are our main and only partners. Political and economic. You can’t risk these relationships,” explained Dmitry Suslov.
Those who will now position this concession as some kind of grandiose victory for the Western coalition in the battle for the sympathies of the Global South (and this is how a number of Western and especially Ukrainian media will write) do not quite understand the essence of the situation.
The United States has been making great efforts over the past month to win over the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America to its side - to force them to join in the global isolation of Russia. However, the incident with the BRICS summit does not mean that their campaign was successful, because the refusal to support Russia does not automatically include Russia in isolation.
“The hallmark of the phenomenon of the current world majority is not support for Russia, but the rejection of Western support against Russia. Non-alignment with sanctions, isolation, criticism of Russia, and not support for all Moscow's actions in the Ukrainian conflict , ”explains Dmitry Suslov.
Simply put, most of the countries of the Global South have been and are still taking a neutral position - and the situation with the summit is one of the manifestations of this neutrality. And just Russian foreign policy is more than American, adapted to the specifics of the political line of developing countries. It, unlike the Western one, does not put its foreign partners in front of the choice "either you are with us or against us." He does not twist their arms, does not issue ultimatums, does not threaten them with sanctions.
Nevertheless, the story of Putin's refusal to come to the BRICS summit has another victim - the BRICS itself. Yes, some experts believe that this refusal will not affect the activities of the organization.
When the single currency of the BRICS countries will replace the dollar
“Putin's non-arrival will confirm that BRICS is not a military-political bloc. This will not affect the effectiveness of the BRICS in a negative way, since everyone already knows that it is not this bloc. In it, unlike the Big Seven, there is no single line of the party. BRICS is an association of sovereign countries, each of which pursues a sovereign policy, largely disagreeing with each other. Including those who want to remain within the framework of the Rome Statute. But at the same time, the continuation of cooperation within the framework of the BRICS, the expansion of the BRICS - everything will continue ,” Dmitry Suslov believes.
However, on the other hand, within the framework of the current situation, global governance structures alternative to Western ones can no longer take a two-sided position - it's time to make a decision. Either renounce some global claims, or take a tougher international position, lay claim to something, as, for example, the SCO did, accepting the frankly anti-American sanctioned Iran.
BRICS did not begin to be determined. First of all, because a number of its member countries (South Africa, Brazil, partly India) are trying to run away from this choice. “This episode could have a bad effect on the reputation of South Africa, as it was under great pressure in connection with the decision of the ICC, and any decision on Putin's visit would break the course of neutrality in the Ukrainian conflict,” explains Nikita Mendkovich . And South Africa's vacillations once again emphasize that today the BRICS as an organization is not ready to be responsible for a multipolar world.
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