Bloomberg: President of Brazil takes back promise not to arrest Putin if he travels to Rio de Janeiro for G20 summit

President of Brazil Lula da Silva backtracked on his pledge that Russian president Vladimir Putin wouldn’t be arrested on a warrant from the International Criminal Court if he were to travel to Brazil, reports Bloomberg.

On March 17, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin. Brazil, which is set to host a G20 summit in 2024, is a signatory to the ICC.

“If Putin decides to go to Brazil, it will be the courts who decide whether or not he will be arrested, not me,” said Lula da Silva at a press conference in New Delhi.

The president of Brazil had previously said Putin wouldn’t be arrested if he travelled to the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro. “If I’m the president of Brazil and if he [Putin] comes to Brazil, there’s no way that he will be arrested,” said Lula da Silva.

“We will see what happens before November 2024, when the G20 summit will take place in Brazil. I hope that by that time the war [in Ukraine] will be over, and everything will be back to normal,” said the president of Brazil.