Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have failed in his attempt at the BRICS summit in Sandton to drum up support from fellow leaders of the bloc for his war effort in Ukraine.
Putin, addressing the summit by video from Moscow, presented a narrative of his invasion of Ukraine as effectively an act of self-defence against Ukraine and the West for mounting a coup in Ukraine in 2014 against the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and then attacking pro-Russian elements in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
But the other four BRICS leaders who were physically present at the summit – President Cyril Ramaphosa, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not publicly support his justification in their responses. […]
In his direct response to Putin, Ramaphosa merely said, “We agree that the war can only be resolved by negotiations which you have always said you support.”
In his speech to the summit, President Lula simply said: “We cannot avoid dealing with the main current conflict taking place in Ukraine with global effects.”
He emphasised that “Brazil’s historic stance is to defend sovereignty, territorial integrity and all the United Nations’ purposes and principles” – principles which Russia has clearly violated by invading Ukraine, though Lula did not spell that out. Läs referatet