Modi-Putin discuss bilateral ties & Brics; Russia to send its foreign minister to G20 Summit
Putin held a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday. The two leaders reviewed progress on a number of issues of bilateral cooperation and exchanged views on regional and global issues of mutual concern, including space cooperation and an upcoming summit of the G20, the PMO said in a statement released on the same.
President Putin also conveyed his inability to attend the G20 Summit in New Delhi on September 9–10, 2023, and informed that Russia would be represented by the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, the PMO further said.
The two leaders took part in a summit of the BRICS group of emerging economies in South Africa last week, Modi in person and Putin by video link.
Last week on Saturday, the Press Secretary to the Russian President Dmitry Peskov had informed the Russian media that President Vladimir Putin will not participate in the G20 leaders’ summit to be held in New Delhi.
These developments are in line with other recent international summits held after the beginning of the Ukraine crisis in February 2022, where Putin has remained absent.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) had earlier in March issued an arrest warrant for Putin and another Russian official.
The warrant is believed to be one of the first charges against Putin for war crimes in Ukraine, part of a global effort to hold the Russian president and the Russian Federation accountable for atrocities beginning with the full-scale February 2022 invasion. Putin has been accused of alleged war crimes.
The warrant cites him and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, commissioner for children's rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, for the forced deportation of Ukrainian children from
