15th BRICS summit

The 2023 BRICS summit was the fifteenth annual BRICS summit, an international relations conference attended by the heads of state or heads of government of the five member states: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa also invited the leaders of 67 countries to the summit.

BRICS Expansion
Several countries have expressed interest in joining the BRICS group. At the summit, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have been invited to join the bloc. Full membership took effect on 1 January 2024.

Participation of Vladimir Putin
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. South Africa is required as an ICC signatory to honour the warrant.

In May 2023, the South African government, led by the African National Congress (ANC), granted all invited leaders diplomatic immunity. It remained unclear at the time whether this would prevent Putin from being arrested if he attended. According to the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, it was standard practice in South Africa to confer such immunity to attendees of international conferences held in the country.

By early June 2023, moving the summit to China was being considered to avoid the issue. In mid-July 2023, Vladimir Putin announced that he would not attend the summit "by mutual agreement" and would instead be sending Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Narendra Modi's refusal to disembark plane
On 22 August 2023, Daily Maverick reported that India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi refused to get off his plane until the deputy president of South Africa was dispatched to welcome him instead of the government cabinet minister that was present to conduct the airport welcome. The South African government denied that Modi had refused to disembark his plane, saying that Ramaphosa was unable to meet Modi at the airport due to scheduling difficulties, and adding that it was common for government ministers to welcome visiting heads of state.

Following the publication of the story the Daily Maverick experienced a sustained DDOS attack from India which forced it to temporarily block access to the site from India. The editor-in-chief of the Daily Maverick speculated that the reason for the DDOS attack was to prevent people in India from reading the article.

Nonattendance by Xi Jinping
Despite meeting with host Cyril Ramaphosa earlier in the day and attending the BRICS dinner afterward, Chinese President Xi Jinping unexpectedly did not attend the BRICS business forum where he had been scheduled to speak and instead his speech was read out by Minister of Commerce of China Wang Wentao.