French President Emmanuel Macron will ask his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to put pressure on Russia to return to the negotiating table in the conflict with Ukraine, the French presidency announced on Monday.
Macron and Xi will meet on Tuesday on the Indonesian island of Bali, on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the group of the most developed and emerging economies, which runs until Wednesday.
According to the French Presidency Macron will tell Xi that the mutual interest is “to put pressure on Russia to return to the negotiating table and respect international law”.🇧🇷
Macron will try to convince Xi, as well as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whom he is due to meet on Wednesday, that “the continuation of the war is not a good thing, even from his point of view”.added the Élysée (French Presidency), quoted by the French agency AFP.
China and India have not condemned the February 24 Russian offensive in Ukraine and, like southern countries, including Indonesia, remain reluctant to criticize Moscow.
Xi Jinping met with US President Joe Biden in Bali today.
A French presidency source told AFP the goal is “continuous pressure in concentric circles on Russia” and not “letting others say it’s not your problem”.
The senior Élysée official, who did not identify the French office, admitted there will be no final statement from the summit condemning the war in Ukraine over Russian opposition.
Russia will be represented at the summit by Foreign Minister Serguei Lavrov due to the absence of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, justified by agenda reasons and the need to stay in Russia.
Some G20 leaders, including Joe Biden, attended the East Asia summit in Phnom Penh on Sunday, which ended without a joint statement as Russia objected to the terms of the war in Ukraine.
“The United States and its allies are insisting on absolutely unacceptable language regarding the situation in Ukraine,” Lavrov justified at the end of the summit in Cambodia’s capital.
The Élysée source also told AFP that Macron will continue to talk to his Russian counterpart and that he intends to reach out to Putin after the G20.
The Bali summit comes as Russia is facing major military setbacks in Ukraine following a counter-offensive launched in September by Ukrainian forces, which received weapons from Kiev’s western allies.
On Friday, Ukrainian troops recaptured part of the Kherson region, including the capital of the same name, after thousands of Russian troops retreated.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Kherson today and called his troops’ victory the “beginning of the end of the war”.
Kherson was the only regional capital of Ukraine controlled by Russia in nearly nine months of war.
It was annexed by Moscow on September 30, along with the regions of Zaporijia, Donetsk and Lugansk.
Russia had already annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014.
The Kiev authorities and the wider international community do not recognize Russia’s sovereignty over the regions it has annexed to Ukraine.
Source: DN
