Boycott COP climate summit if Putin shows, Ukraine tells West

The international community should shun the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan if Russian President Vladimir Putin attends, a top Ukrainian diplomat told POLITICO.
“We need to exert this pressure and our partners need to make it clear to Azerbaijan that, if Putin is there, they aren’t coming,” said Ukraine’s EU ambassador, Vsevolod Chentsov, in an interview.
Chentsov’s call comes after the Kremlin said Tuesday that Putin was considering attending the annual U.N.-backed climate gathering, which begins Nov. 11 in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital.
“A decision has not yet been made,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state-run news outlet RIA Novosti.
Chentsov noted that Azerbaijan was increasingly “quite dependent” on the EU, given the bloc’s pivot to the oil and gas-rich South Caucasus nation to help replace Russian fossil fuels.
“They want to foster cooperation with the EU, and they should be really careful in that regard,” the Ukrainian diplomat said, arguing that gave Brussels key leverage over Baku.
Putin has scaled back on international travel in recent years, with much of the world shunning him and an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for war crimes allegations limiting his choices.
Azerbaijan, however, isn’t part of the ICC, meaning it is not obliged to detain the Russian leader when he sets foot on its soil. Putin visited the country in August, holding friendly talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on expanding trade and political ties.
Chentsov stressed that the arrest warrant should be enough to discourage Putin’s attendance at the major diplomatic event.
“We are warning our partners that what Russia is doing is war crimes, and we’ve made the point that we need to be aware that Russia tries to normalize the war,” he said.
On Monday, Ukraine urged Brazil, which will host the G20 summit next month, to arrest the Russian president if he shows up at the meeting.
A senior EU official told POLITICO the Kremlin should not get to derail the critical climate conference, which organizers are hoping will yield a new, more ambitious financial target for helping developing countries deal with climate change.
“We are not scared of Putin — should he come, it would be an opportunity to confront his lies and aggression,” said the official, granted anonymity to speak freely.