Macron says G20 must agree before inviting Putin to summit

BRASILIA (AFP) :  French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that members of the G20 would have to agree before Russian leader Vladimir Putin is invited to attend the group’s summit in Brazil in November.

“The meaning of this club is that there must be consensus with the 19 others. That will be a job for Brazilian diplomacy,” he said during a joint press conference in Brasilia with his counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

If such a meeting can be “useful, it must be done,” Macron said, though he warned division on the matter could scuttle any Russian invitation.

Brazil, the current chair of the G20 group — which represents 80 percent of the global economy — has opposed the US-led drive to isolate and punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, arguing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Western countries share some of the blame for the war.

Putin missed last year’s G20 summit in the Indian capital New Delhi, avoiding possible political opprobrium and any risk of criminal detention under an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant.

In September 2023, Lula said there was “no way” that Putin would be arrested if he attended the Rio de Janeiro summit.

Shortly after, he backtracked and said that it would be up to the justice system to decide on Putin’s eventual arrest and not his government.