Possibly because he doesn’t want to be berated on the world stage or maybe because he fears he’s losing strength at home, but Russian President Vladimir Putin will skip the BRICS conference of economic leaders, CNN reports.
The leaders of the four other member nations–Brazil’s Luiz Lula da Silva and India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa–are all expected at the Johannesburg summit. While China has supported Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, the other nations have spoken out against the Kremlin’s aggression.