Even if he had been granted immunity by the International Criminal Court, Vladimir Putin would not have travelled to South Africa for the BRICS summit on August 22.
He is paranoid and does not trust anybody. He does not even trust his own people, let alone foreign governments and institutions, which Putin perceives as enemies.
No one in the Kremlin’s hallways but Putin, one or two people close to him and Russian intelligence bosses had known in advance that Putin would skip the BRICS summit.
Putin would have never flown to South Africa over those many unfriendly skies. He is afraid to fly across international skies and of being arrested in South Africa.
He does not believe his army would respond if he got arrested in South Africa. He is afraid to leave Moscow at the disposal of today’s corrupt and immoral Russian elite during controversial times.
Kremlin’s lackeys in the administration and foreign ministry kept working on a fake agenda regarding Putin’s alleged preparations and various mechanisms that appeared as variations on how to accommodate Putin at the BRICS summit.
This was done because that is what Kremlin’s apparatchiks are supposed to do - produce various cover stories to advance the Kremlin’s interests, inject myths into the public domain and confuse everyone, including other countries and their leaders.
Bringing confusion to foes and friends alike
The ongoing controversy regarding Putin’s attendance at the BRICS summit has been heavily exploited by Russia.
The goal the Kremlin has been pursuing was no different from any regular Kremlin’s goal: mislead both adversaries and allies and provide the Russian patriotic majority with a digestible legend on why the “all-mighty” Putin would eventually skip the BRICS summit even though Russia said that arresting Putin would mean a declaration of war, which, of course, was just another fantasy.
The Russian army could not even cross the Dnipro River in Ukraine, and it could not reach South Africa even if some delusional general ordered it.
If such a request to attack South Africa had been released by some Russian official, no one in Russia would have followed it. If Putin had been arrested in South Africa based on the ICC order, Russian elites would have been too busy with divisions in their ranks and dividing Russian assets in the new government without Putin’s being part of it.
First and foremost, Putin has been using uncertainty and confusion regarding his attendance at the BRICS summit to reconfirm and reinstate his fake - yet accepted by the world community - status of a distinguished world leader.
Humiliating allies
Putin loves that other countries have been puzzled while they tried to please and accommodate him.
Deep inside, he despises South African leaders, just as he despises all his lackeys. Putin needs South Africa in the BRICS just to challenge Anglo-Saxons globally. If he could, he would have facilitated a coup in South Africa and brought someone from Russian Friendship University: someone with Russian roots and/or ties to lead South Africa as a Russian proxy.
Putin and the Kremlin would love to see confusion in South Africa and their attempts to avoid the ICC order. This is typical of the Kremlin and Putin. Moscow loves to humiliate allies and enemies equally.
This sadism inherent to Putin’s Russia was last seen in the Kremlin during the days of Stalin.
Too bad no one could have explained that to Angela Merkel when she had spent hours waiting to have a face to face audience with Putin, and he was late just to humiliate Germany and Merkel.
Putin would have never flown that far during war, even without the ICC order.
Putin’s obsession with security and paranoia is well known in Russia. He is not even using his plane when travelling in Russia. Instead, he has been using his heavily armoured train, much similar to the one used by the current and previous North Korean leaders.
How to overthrow global institutions?
The second and possibly even more significant reason why Putin and the Kremlin have been using uncertainty regarding his attendance at the BRICS summit is related to Moscow’s obsession with demolishing the existing world order.
Russia wants to crack global institutions, particularly in hostile Western democracies. Russia wanted other counties to seek how to infringe the ICC order.
Russia has been attempting to break the global system and architecture for years.
This time Moscow wanted other countries to attempt and facilitate a violation of the ICC order so that the global system would appear incompetent and non-functional.
Russia wants to see the world criminal law system crack. Moscow wants to see other countries, this time South Africa, try to violate or avoid the ICC ruling so that a precedent is made.
Russia loves global precedents favourable to Russia. It then uses those precedents to justify their own evil actions and increase them exponentially. Russia did so with its crimes and occupations.
Russia's recent exit from the agreement on the grain export from the Black Sea ports has the same goal.
That is an attempt to weaponise hunger and jeopardise other countries with hunger or flow of migrants to European countries because of starvation, in order to advance right-wing politicians around the globe loyal to Moscow.
