Roving Periscope: After skipping the BRICS in SA, an isolated Putin won’t attend the G-20 Summit also
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: After skipping last week’s BRICS Summit in South Africa, Russian President Vladimir Putin, apparently apprehending his arrest abroad or a possible second coup at home, will not attend the Group of 20 (G-20) Summit in India, scheduled for September 9 and 10.
He confirmed his absence in a telephonic conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, wherein he also congratulated India for being the first country to land a spacecraft, Chandrayaan-3, on the Moon’s South Pole and recalled the two countries’ old friendship.
The two leaders also discussed ‘issues of mutual interests’, including trade and economic cooperation, the media reported.
Russia Federation’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will attend the G-20 Summit.
With India hosting it, the G-20 Summit will take place at Bharat Mandapam International Exhibition-Convention Centre, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. It will be the first-ever G-20 Summit to be held in India as well as in South Asia.
Officials in New Delhi said President Putin “expressed an understanding” for his decision to skip the G-20 Summit.
Both Russia and India launched lunar probes in August, but only the Indian spacecraft landed successfully on Earth’s satellite while the Russian craft, Luna 25, crashed.
“Readiness was reaffirmed to further develop bilateral cooperation in the space sector,” the Kremlin said in a statement after the two leaders’ conversation. They also spoke on “issues of mutual concern”, including the recently concluded BRICS Summit in South Africa.
While PM Modi participated in the BRICS Summit in person, the Russian President attended it via video link because of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for him over alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
The Kremlin denies the accusations, insisting the warrant against Putin is “void”.
The ICC has 123 member nations but China, Russia, the USA, India, and many others are not signatories to it.
South Africa is still a member of the ICC but the relationship soured after the Omar al-Bashir incident. Despite this, President Putin skipped the BRICS Summit.
Even though India is not an ICC signatory, he chose to skip the G-20 Summit as well, coming as it does so closely after his blue-eyed boy-turned-foe Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner militia chief, died in a suspected air crash near Moscow last week. The Wagner rebellion, although short-lived, exposed the fragility of Putin’s ‘iron grip’ on the Kremlin and the Russian forces, many of whom are reported to be against continuing the ongoing Ukraine war.
On its part, India has not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and pressed for diplomacy and dialogue to solve the crisis. At the same time, it multiplied its trade with Russia, particularly with crude imports, after the Ukraine war began in February 2022. India has also pursued greater security ties with the United States.
Even now, Russia remains by far India’s biggest arms supplier.
“Topical issues of Russian-Indian relations, which are progressively developing in the spirit of a particularly privileged strategic partnership, were considered,” the Kremlin said in a statement, referring to the Putin-Modi conversation.
“The positive dynamics of trade and economic cooperation was affirmed,” it added.
