NEW DELHI, March 3 (Portal) – Russia must not go to war with impunity, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday after meeting his counterparts from India, Japan and Australia in New Delhi.
The so-called Quad group also said in a statement released after the meeting that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine was “impermissible”.
Late last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended a landmark nuclear arms control treaty and threatened to resume nuclear testing.
“If we allow Russia to do what it’s doing in Ukraine with impunity, that sends a message to potential aggressors everywhere that maybe they can get away with it, too,” Blinken said at a forum in India also attended by Ukrainians attended Quad Ministers.
Blinken met with colleagues from the Quad group on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in New Delhi where ministers exchanged blame for the conflict.
A day earlier, Blinken had met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in New Delhi for the first time since the Ukraine conflict broke out just over a year ago. During the brief encounter, Blinken urged Moscow to end the war and reverse the suspension of the New START nuclear treaty, a senior US official said.
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The Russian Foreign Ministry said Lavrov and Blinken spoke for less than 10 minutes and did not engage in negotiations, Russian news agencies reported.
At the G20, the United States and its allies called on member countries to continue to pressure Russia to end the conflict, but the G20 could not agree on a joint one due to opposition from Russia, which describes its actions as a “special military”. Declaration of War “Several Operations” and China.
On Friday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called on the world community to work together. “Anyone abstaining in different regions needs to understand that we are faced with something that negates the possibility of a global consensus,” he said.
In their statement, the Quad ministers also thinly attacked China, denouncing actions that increase tensions in the South China Sea and the “militarization” of disputed areas in the region.
China has denounced the Quad as a Cold War construct and a clique that “targets other countries.” The group’s title is Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which focuses on strategic issues in the Indo-Pacific region.
(This story has been corrected to correct the attribution to blinking in the headline, leading paragraph, and attributes of the quad statement in paragraph 2.)
Additional reporting by Tanvi Mehta and Shilpa Jamkhandikar; writing from Miral Fahmy; Edited by Simon Cameron Moore
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