Macron: The G20 must agree on an invitation to Putin

French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that G20 members must reach an agreement before Russian leader Vladimir Putin is invited to attend the group's summit in Brazil in November.
"The point of this club is that there should be a consensus with the other 19 countries. This will be a job for Brazilian diplomacy," he said during a joint press conference in Brazil with his colleague Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
If such a meeting could be "useful, it should take place," Macron said, though he warned that division over the issue could scuttle any Russian invitation.
Brazil, the current chair of the G20 group - which accounts for 80% of the world's economy - opposes US-led efforts to isolate and punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, arguing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Western countries share part of the blame for the war.
Putin skipped last year's G20 summit in the Indian capital of New Delhi, avoiding possible political censure and the risk of criminal detention under an International Criminal Court (ICC) order.
In September 2023, Lula said there was "no way" Putin would be arrested if he attended the summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Shortly after that, he reversed himself and stated that the decision on Putin's possible arrest would be made by the judicial system, not by his government./BGNES