US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he urged his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to end the war in Ukraine on Thursday in India, during their first face-to-face exchange since the start of the conflict.
MM. Blinken and Lavrov spoke briefly at a meeting of G20 foreign ministers, which ended Thursday without a joint statement due to differences over the war in Ukraine.
“I told the (Russian) foreign minister what I, like so many others said last week at the United Nations and what so many G20 foreign ministers said today: end to this war of aggression, engage in meaningful diplomacy that can produce a just and lasting peace,” Blinken told a news conference.
His previous one-on-one meeting with Sergei Lavrov dated back to January 2022, a few weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24. However, they had since discussed on the phone but on subjects other than Ukraine.
The spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, played down the importance of this exchange.
Mr. Lavrov “spoke to him, standing, within the framework of the second session of the G20”. “No interview or real meeting took place,” assured Ms. Zakharova to the Russian public news agency RIA Novosti.
For Harsh V. Pant, professor at King’s College London, this meeting will not “fundamentally change the dynamics on the ground” in Ukraine.
MM. Blinken and Lavrov “didn’t say anything that would convince anyone that this crisis is moving towards a meaningful or serious resolution,” the international relations expert told AFP.
In front of his G20 counterparts, the head of Russian diplomacy castigated the “lewd behavior of a series of Western delegations, which turned the work on the G20 agenda into a farce”, according to the Russian public agency CASS.
The meeting of G20 foreign ministers came after last week’s meeting of finance ministers, who were unable to agree on a joint statement on Saturday due to their differences over the conflict in Ukraine.
On Thursday, China again joined Russia in refusing to sign the joint communiqué following the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting.
Both countries have signaled their opposition to a paragraph demanding “Russia’s complete and unconditional withdrawal from the territory of Ukraine”, according to a summary of the G20 discussions released by the Indian presidency.
Russia also wanted to include in the document the need for an “impartial” investigation, after the explosions which in September damaged the Russian gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 in the Baltic Sea, indicated to the press Mr. Lavrov.
Western countries and Russia blame each other for these explosions.
Western delegates fear China is considering supplying arms to Russia and said ahead of the summit they intended to discourage Beijing from intervening in the conflict.
“If China engages in lethal material support for Russia’s aggression or engages in systematic sanctions-busting to help Russia, it would be a serious problem for our countries,” Mr. Blinken.
Since the start of the conflict, China has presented itself as neutral, while maintaining close ties with its strategic Russian ally.
India had wanted its G20 presidency this year to focus on issues such as poverty reduction and global warming.
But the war in Ukraine has almost eclipsed the other items on the agenda.
“We must all recognize that multilateralism is in crisis today,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said earlier in a pre-recorded statement at the opening of the meeting.
“The experience of recent years – financial crisis, climate change, pandemic, terrorism and war – clearly shows that global governance has failed,” he said, calling on the G20 to come together to overcome their differences.
India, which this year chairs the Group of Twenty, did not condemn the invasion of Ukraine. New Delhi is also a major customer of Moscow in the military field and has increased its imports of Russian oil over the past year, contrary to Western countries.
02/03/2023 17:36:07 – New Delhi (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
