Wednesday 20 October 2021

Climate Summit COP26
Putin cancels participation in world climate summit

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the COP26 climate change conference in Scotland. “Unfortunately Putin will not fly to Glasgow,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday. Nevertheless, climate change remains “one of the most important priorities of our foreign policy”.

Heads of state and government of several countries will meet in Glasgow in November for a climate summit. Experts see the meeting as “the last chance” to stop catastrophic global warming. Peskov said Russia would be represented at the summit, but gave no further details.

Russia is the world’s fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases and one of the largest oil and gas producers. Putin, who has long questioned man-made climate change, has taken a different tone in the past few months.

In mid-October he announced that Moscow would strive for so-called carbon dioxide neutrality by 2060, at the latest. Carbon dioxide neutrality means that a country does not emit as much of the climate-damaging gas as can be offset by forests and other natural reservoirs.