India, the host country of the G20 summit, is also being courted by the Western powers, who are inevitably turning their attention to the fallout from the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. When the finance ministers of the countries of the bloc, which includes the most important or most representative states in the world, met a few days ago, the subject of jointly condemning Russia as an aggressor country did not find and did not have a common consensus to resort to a more general document summary of the various positions. Noting that China, although it has verbally pledged to support Moscow-Kiev peace talks, is in fact firmly allied with Vladimir Putin, the Americans and Europeans aim to break away from India and (perhaps, but the difficulties are obviously) to benefit from other countries like Brazil or South Africa an approach to their positions.
Positions very far removed from those of Russia, which is also present in New Delhi. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he intends to use the G20 stage to tell the world who is really to blame for the economic and political crisis the planet has plunged into after the war: Westerners who are Ukraine support, of course, which Moscow has a keen interest in portraying as irresponsible those who, out of partisan interests, do not hesitate to push the world into nuclear catastrophe and further impoverish already poor nations. And while the German delegation promises to respond unreservedly to what it calls “Russian propaganda,” European Union representative Josep Borrell issued a clear warning to everyone present against the temptations of ambiguity: The EU will not sign any joint document containing no condemnation of the war unleashed by Putin.
Aware of the special relationship between Russia and India, centered on economic exchanges (India buys Russian oil at discounted prices) and on India’s strategy of remaining as equidistant as possible between Moscow and the West, Borrell said, he expects New Delhi to “make it clear to Russia that this war has to end.” Finally, Borrell says, certainly not in the way Putin would like, namely Russia’s forcibly taken from Ukraine and after a farce referendum annexed: Europe as well as the United States, who are apparently present with Foreign Minister Antony Blinken as head of delegation, supports Kyiv’s right to restore its territorial integrity India replies that it is clear that the issue of Ukraine will be the focus of this G20 meeting, expect, however, the same attention to important issues, the consequences of the war are: above all m the obstacles that would be placed in the way of the exchange of energy, food and fertilizers Russia in particular is a major exporter.
Speaking of the USA: Blinken made it clear that no bilateral meeting with Lavrov or the Chinese envoy Qin Gang was planned. American relations with China are also known to be very tense, especially after the “balloon crisis” that was shot down in the US sky. In the same hours, the official visit to Beijing of Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko, who is wasting applause on the Chinese “peace plan” and is looking for someone to break him out of international isolation. Indeed, Xi Jinping is very active in weaving the web of an “axis of evil” that will unite the world’s worst regimes in a challenge to the West: he plans to visit Putin and another in Tehran in the coming months. Neither he nor his Russian ally have a problem with Iran’s intense work to get nuclear weapons, or the brutal repression of a people weary of medieval oppression: against America and Europe, they don’t seem too thin.