G20 foreign ministers’ meeting held amid mutual accusations between Russia and West

Photo: mid.ru Worldwide

The meeting of heads of foreign ministries of G20 countries in Delhi took place in an atmosphere far from mutual understanding. Despite Indian attempts to smooth things over, tensions over the Ukraine crisis dictated the agenda. As a result, discussions at the meeting were reduced to mutual accusations by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and representatives of Western countries. The ministers did not agree on a final declaration following the results of the summit.

Lavrov arrived at the meeting at 8:59 a.m. local time, one minute before the start of the meeting. By this point, everyone else, including US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, had already taken their seats. The day before, Moscow and Washington announced that they did not plan to discuss problematic issues on the sidelines of the summit, but a short conversation took place afterwards. Blinken urged Lavrov to finish off the SVO, release detained US citizen Paul Whelan, not suspend START and “engage in meaningful diplomacy”.

– In an attempt to find at least something unifying, the Indian authorities have tried to transfer the discussion of the Ukrainian question to a purely economic level. In other words, Delhi offered to discuss not so much the conflict itself as its impact on food and energy security, writes Kommersant.

The result has not been too happy for India’s peace initiatives. The ministers did not agree on a final declaration at the end of the summit. Instead of a statement, only the so-called presidential party summary was released. The reason is that the Russian Federation and China did not approve paragraphs 3 and 4, informing about the negative impact of the Ukrainian conflict on the world economy and condemning “Russian aggression against Ukraine”.

At the same time, all participants in the Delhi meeting agreed to fight against climate change, oppose the criminal use of new technologies and condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.