Beijing and Moscow hand in hand. They accused Thursday at the G20 Western countries of using “blackmail” and “threats” to impose their views, when the G20 finds itself in India divided by the war in Ukraine.
India, which this year chairs the Group of Twenty, has a long-standing friendship with Russia and has not condemned 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.
Divisions at the G20
A sign of the divisions within the G20, the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken has warned that he does not plan to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov at a meeting of foreign ministers.
On the sidelines of this meeting, Sergei Lavrov spoke with his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang, whose country has close ties with Moscow. They “unanimously rejected attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, to impose unilateral approaches through blackmail and threats”, according to a press release from Russian diplomacy. 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.
India wants its G20 presidency this year to focus on issues such as poverty reduction and global warming. But the war in Ukraine has so far overshadowed other items on the agenda.