Russian President Vladimir Putin took multiple shots at the West on the opening day of an economic summit in South Africa, using a prerecorded speech to slam what he called “illegitimate sanctions” on his country and threaten to cut off Ukraine's grain exports permanently.

Putin, the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant related to the war in Ukraine, did not travel to Johannesburg for the summit of the BRICS group of emerging economies. Instead, he plans to participate remotely in the three-day meeting of the bloc that encompasses Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Sitting at a desk with a white notebook in front of him and a Russian flag behind, Putin said a wartime deal to facilitate Ukrainian grain shipments that is critical for the world's food supply would not resume until his conditions — the easing of restrictions on Russian food and agricultural products — are met.

The West’s attempts to punish and isolate Russia financially for sending troops into Ukraine are an “illegitimate sanctions practice and illegal freezing of assets of sovereign states, which essentially amounts to them trampling upon all the basic norms and rules of free trade,” the Russian leader asserted.

After Russia's pulling out of the Black Sea Grain Deal, Putin said that even with Russian exports of grain and fertiliser being “deliberately obstructed,” his country has “the capacity to replace Ukraine in grain, both commercially and in free aid to needy countries,” according to an official translation of his speech at the summit.

The United States and other Western nations have not directly targeted Russian agricultural exports, but moves to restrict Russia’s access to international financial payment systems under some sanctions have made it difficult for the country to get food, fertiliser and other products to market.

“With these facts in mind, since July 18, we have refused to extend the so-called deal,” Putin said. “We will be ready to get back to it, but only if all the obligations to the Russian side are truly fulfilled.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping also brought an air of confrontation to the Johannesburg summit, saying in a speech read on his behalf by a Chinese government minister minutes after Putin's address that “some country, obsessed with maintaining its hegemony, has gone out of its way to cripple the emerging markets and developing countries.”

“Whoever is developing fast becomes its target of containment. Whoever is catching up becomes its target of obstructions,” Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao said while delivering Xi's speech.

The leaders were expected to discuss the top agenda point for the three-day summit, a possible expansion of BRICS. They are scheduled to reconvene for the summit's main day of talks on Wednesday.

The five BRICS countries are already home to 40 percent of the world’s population and responsible for more than 30 percent of global economic output, and more than 20 nations have applied to join, according to South African officials, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi planned to attend the summit.

The five current member countries will have to agree on the criteria for new members before any countries are admitted, but a bigger BRICS is seen as a policy favoured by China and Russia amid those deteriorating relations with the West.

While summit host South Africa has pushed back at characterizations that BRICS is taking more of an anti-West turn under Russian and Chinese influence, it's clearly a forum for growing discontent in the developing world with global institutions.