South Africa may abandon its role as host of this year’s Brics summit in an attempt to avoid international pressure to arrest the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who is wanted by the international criminal court on charges of war crimes.
In a flurry of diplomatic activity around Ukraine, South Africa with five other African states is trying to garner support for a new peace plan. South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, on Saturday briefed Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, on the upcoming visit by African leaders to Russia and Ukraine in an attempt to end hostilities. China has its own peace mission under way, and it is not clear what the Africa mission might add.
Ramaphosa has recruited Zambia, Senegal, Republic of Congo, Uganda, and Egypt to join his peace delegation.
As a party to the Rome statute, the treaty underpinning the court, Pretoria would be required to arrest Putin and then send him to The Hague for trial.
But China and India, if they hosted the summit, would not face the same obligation, leading some South African officials to suggest handing the summit to Beijing. Brazil, the fifth member of Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is also a party to the court, so faces the same dilemma as South Africa.
Ukraine hopes to capitalise on the proliferation of peace plans emerging from the global south by staging a peace conference in July, possibly in Denmark, at which it would set out its terms for a settlement to the conflict.
The aspiration is that by then Ukraine’s counteroffensive would have changed the dynamic of the war, and Kyiv hopes the global south will realise that Russia needs to leave Ukraine to avoid further bloodshed. The Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, has already said he is willing to host such an event.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymr Zelenskiy, said he would speak on Sunday to the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, about a dinner Duda intends to attend on Monday with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, focused on Ukraine’s bid for Nato membership at a summit in Vilnius in July.
The three leaders are expected to discuss the postwar security guarantees that can be offered to Ukraine, and how specific a route map to Nato membership can be offered. Zelenskiy said: “Let’s hope that our colleagues are thinking about how to speed up Ukraine’s accession to Nato. Or not. Let’s see.”
In an unprecedented speech in Bratislava this month, Macron not only held out an olive branch to eastern European states he has criticised in the past, including Poland, but proposed guarantees to Ukraine that match those provided by the US to Israel. The guarantees would not necessarily be provided by Nato itself but by Nato member states.
He said Ukraine warranted “strong, concrete and tangible” security guarantees and argued that it should be offered “a path towards membership”. However, Scholz struck a different tone, saying last Thursday that the focus should not be on Nato membership. He said: “It is also clear that we will have to discuss what security guarantees can be provided in the postwar situation”
The exact nature of the offer that could be made to Ukraine is complicated by the fact that when the Nato members meet, the context may have changed depending on perceptions of the state of the counteroffensive currently under way. Ukraine could not be offered Nato membership while at war with Russia since that would require the alliance taking on a commitment to go to war with Moscow.
US envoy to Nato, Juliette Smith, told Politico last week: “I think the allies now are in agreement that a proper invitation is unlikely while they’re engaged in a full-scale war.”
At the same time, the fear is that if the Vilnius summit sends out a weak signal to Ukraine, that may encourage Putin to believe western support is wavering and that he could ultimately win the war or at least achieve a frozen conflict. Poland wants the focus to be on the guarantees that can be provided before membership, covering ammunition production inside Ukraine, continued supplies of arms and air power to Ukraine and the interoperability of Ukrainian and Nato weaponry.
The US president, Joe Biden, is also being urged to make progress on the issue at Vilnius rather than wait until next year’s Nato summit in Washington, which will fall in the middle of an election campaign consumed by the question of whether the US should extend its defence commitments with Europe.
