G20 foreign ministers travel to the resort island of Bali this week for a meeting that will be overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, with Russia’s attendance creating rifts in the bloc as host Indonesia tries to mediate.
The Group of 20 includes Western countries that have accused Moscow of war crimes in Ukraine and rolled out sanctions, but also countries like China, Indonesia, India and South Africa that have not followed suit.
The gathering will be the first time that foreign ministers from some of the world’s top economies meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
Speaking ahead of the G20 meeting that runs from Thursday to Friday, German foreign ministry spokesperson Christian Wagner said it would not be a “normal summit” nor “business as usual”.
Germany holds the presidency of the Group of Seven industrialised nations and would coordinate in Bali over how to respond to Lavrov in light of the war in Ukraine, he said.
Top officials from Britain, Canada and the United States walked out on Russian representatives during a G20 finance meeting in Washington in April.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken would be an active participant at the meeting while “also staying true to another over-riding objective, and that is the fact that it cannot be business as usual with the Russian Federation”, a U.S. state department spokesperson said.
Blinken will meet Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Bali, but no meeting is expected with Lavrov.
As G20 chair this year, Indonesia has been caught at the centre of a geopolitical storm over the war, attempting to head off threats by Western countries to boycott meetings. After the foreign ministers’ meeting, G20 finance ministers are scheduled to meet next week, also in Bali.
Trying to leverage Indonesia’s neutrality, President Joko Widodo embarked on an ambitious peace-brokering mission last week, visiting Kyiv and Moscow to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The president, who is widely known as Jokowi, has invited Ukraine to the G20 this year, attempted to convince Russia to end a blockade on grain exports that is driving a global food crisis, and offered up Indonesia as a “diplomatic bridge” between the nations.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Indonesia Vasyl Hamianin said his country’s foreign minister would give a virtual address at the Bali meeting.
