Mexico’s President-elect explains invitation to Vladimir Putin to attend presidential inauguration

Mexico City, Mexico — Mexican President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum this week explained the reasoning behind Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invitation to her presidential inauguration, which caused a diplomatic backlash. 

On July 7, it was reported that the authoritarian leader was invited to attend Sheinbaum’s inauguration on October 1. The embassy of Ukraine, who has been fighting off an invasion of Russia since February 2022, immediately issued a statement calling on Mexico to arrest Putin if he attends the inauguration, stressing that Putin is a war criminal with an international arrest warrant. 

“We trust that the Mexican government would in any case comply with the international arrest warrant by handing the aforementioned to the United Nations judicial body in The Hague,” read the statement. On March 17, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation. 

President-elect Sheinbaum responded on Wednesday, explaining that the invitation was within the diplomatic protocol of the Mexican government for presidential inaugurations, where all countries who hold diplomatic ties with Mexico are invited, without exception. 

“These are diplomatic notes that are normally sent when there are inaugurations and they are sent to all countries where there are relations,” said Sheinbaum during a press conference. 

Sheinbaum’s pick for Mexico’s Foreign Minister, Juan Ramón de la Fuente, explained the invitations are broadly extended to all countries. “It is a protocolary practice that basically consists of sending a diplomatic missive to all countries with which Mexico has relations, without exclusions,” he said. 

Mexico’s outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is also Sheinbaum’s political patron, has maintained Mexico’s neutrality in the conflict since it began. His government has condemned the invasion at the United Nations, but has also sharply criticized the United States for sending weapons to Ukraine, and has itself refused to send arms to Ukraine.  

In his morning press briefing on July 8, President López Obrador underscored Mexico’s neutrality stance in the two-year-old war.

“It does not correspond to us; we are against wars; we are in favor of peace, and what we have proposed, in the case of the Russian-Ukrainian war, are agreements that there be an intermediation,” he said.
When asked if he would arrest Putin if he attended the inauguration, the president said, “We can’t do that” … “It’s not up to us,” said López Obrador during his morning briefing.