The head of Russian diplomacy, Serguei Lavrov, left Bali on Tuesday, at the end of the first day of the G20 summit on this Indonesian island, and was replaced by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Russian state news agency RIA/Novosti reported. .
“As expected, Serguei Lavrov left Bali after the first day of the G20 summit,” reported RIA Novosti, adding that Siluanov would now represent Russia in the absence of President Vladimir Putin.
“The final statement [da cimeira] must be approved tomorrow [quarta-feira] after a meeting on digitisation. Russia is represented by the Minister of Finance [Anton] Silunov”the state news agency said.
The most important meeting of world leaders since the start of the pandemic takes place without Putin in the tropical environment of Bali, nearly nine months after the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine that sent energy and food prices soaring and the nuclear threat resurfaced up . .
Moscow claimed scheduling problems and the need for Putin to stay in Russia to justify his absence.
Although Ukraine is not part of the G20, President Volodymyr Zelensky was invited by his Indonesian counterpart, Joko Widodo, acting chairman of the group, to speak via video conference.
This is the first G20 summit since the outbreak of war in Ukraine on February 24 this year, and the lack of consensus could be reflected in the final joint statement, as happened at the East Asia Summit held in Phnom Penh on Sunday. Penh was held.
Lavrov on Tuesday accused Ukraine of demanding unrealistic terms for participation in talks to end the war between the two countries.
“All the problems come from the Ukrainian side, which categorically refuses to negotiate and makes clearly unrealistic demands,” Lavrov told reporters at the G20 summit.
The head of Russian diplomacy said he conveyed this position to French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during “brief talks” at the summit of the 20 most developed and emerging economies.
Lavrov also met in Bali on Tuesday with UN Secretary-General António Guterres and his Turkish counterpart, Mevlüt Çavusoglu, with whom he discussed the G20’s final statement, including the section devoted to the cereals agreement .
Source: DN
