The heads of Russian and US diplomacy will be under one roof today and tomorrow, for the first time since July, without any face-to-face being planned.
The war being waged in Ukraine, directly or indirectly, weighs heavily on the G-20 meeting of foreign ministers in neutral New Delhi.
India, which this year chairs the group, tries to stay on the razor's edge, which will hardly be enough to agree on a joint statement by the G-20. The Indian press also doubts that a video conference of the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dimitro Kuleba will be allowed.
It was already denied last Saturday to the head of Finance of Ukraine, in the previous appointment of ministers of the branch, in Bangalore, who concluded the following: "The G-20 is not a forum to discuss security issues."
As compensation, India will take advantage of the presence of the US, Australia and Japan to hold a side meeting of Quad, an advocacy forum that has China in its sights. “It was the 2007 government, not the 2017 government, that went along with Quad,” said Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, whose wife is Japanese, defensively.
The meeting in Delhi will be the introduction of the new Chinese foreign minister, Qin Gang, who is also not on the agenda of his US counterpart. Antony Blinken landed last night from Uzbekistan, where he had met with five of the Central Asian partners from Moscow, uneasy to see Russian irredentism in action in another ex-Soviet republic.
Blinken isn't the only Foreign Officer who missed last night's homecoming dinner. Some, like Japan and South Korea, fully excused his attendance for internal reasons.
It should be remembered that the G-20 includes all the G-7 and Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), as well as several emerging countries. From Turkey to South Korea, passing through Mexico, Argentina or Saudi Arabia. Spain and the Netherlands are permanent guests.
The host, India, wants to go beyond Ukraine and discuss multilateralism and reform of international institutions, just months after its becoming the most populous country in the world.
Sergei Lavrov's Russia says it appreciates India's efforts to avoid "the fragmentation of the global economy." His misfortune is that no matter how much he disguises his Third World discourse, Moscow no longer has a model or an alternative utopia to offer.
Meanwhile, India's neutrality – like Turkey's – is accused of taking advantage of the troubled river to reduce the gap that separates it from the rich countries. Thus, a large part of the crude – and diesel – that the EU refuses to buy directly from Russia, acquires it through re-exports from the Emirates or India, often refined in the home state of the prime minister, Narendra Modi. There he built the largest refinery in the world, owned by magnate Mukesh Ambani, along with another owned by the Russian company Rosneft.
India wants to discuss the impact of the war on food and energy security, and South Africa refuses to let it cover up the debate on underdevelopment and climate change. All this in the warmest winter in 120 years in the most polluted capital in the world.
