TOKYO (AP) — President Joe Biden told other Indo-Pacific leaders gathered for a four-nation summit on Tuesday that they were navigating “a dark hour in our shared history” due to Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine, and he urged the group to try to stop Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
“This is more than just a European issue. It’s a global problem,” Biden said at the start of the “Quad” summit with Japan, Australia and India.
While the president didn’t call any countries directly, his message seemed at least partly aimed at Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with whom there remain disagreements over how to respond to the Russian invasion.
Unlike other Quad countries and almost every other US ally, India has not imposed sanctions or even condemned Russia, its largest supplier of military equipment.
With Modi seated nearby, Biden asserted that the world had a shared responsibility to do something to support Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression.
“We are navigating a dark hour in our history together,” he said. “Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war against Ukraine has unleashed a humanitarian catastrophe and innocent civilians have been killed in the streets and millions of refugees are both internally displaced and in exile.”
“The world needs to deal with this and we are doing it,” he added.
The White House has lavished praise on several Pacific countries, including Japan, Singapore and South Korea, for hitting Russia with tough sanctions and export bans while offering humanitarian and military assistance to Kyiv.
For some of the major Asian powers, the invasion was viewed as a pivotal moment for the world to demonstrate, through a strong response to Russia, that China should not seek contested territory through military action.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, noting Russian aggression in Ukraine, told fellow leaders, “We cannot allow the same thing to happen in the Indo-Pacific region.”
The White House is disappointed by the relative silence of India, the world’s largest democracy.
Biden has asked Modi not to rush Russian oil purchases as the US and other allies seek to squeeze Moscow’s energy revenues. India’s prime minister has not publicly committed to exiting Russian oil, and Biden has publicly called India “a bit shaky” in his response to the invasion.
Under pressure from the West, India has condemned the deaths of civilians in Ukraine and called for an immediate cessation of hostilities. However, it has also compounded the aftermath of a war that has caused global food shortages by banning wheat exports, at a time when starvation is a growing risk in parts of the world. The Indian Prime Minister did not address Russia’s war against Ukraine in his public statements at the summit.
Biden has been making Modi his case for weeks.
The two spoke about the Russian invasion during a virtual quad leadership meeting in March, and last month they held a brief video call when Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with their Indian counterparts in Washington.
“So it’s not going to be a new conversation,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said ahead of the summit. “It will be a continuation of the conversation they’ve already had about how we see the picture in Ukraine and the impact of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine on a broader range of concerns in the world.”
While Biden and Modi could avoid a public confrontation over how to respond to Russia’s aggression, the issue remains an important one as the US and its allies seek to ramp up pressure on Putin,” said Michael Green, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“It seems pretty clear that the Biden administration is not looking for trouble with India and that most of these difficult talks are private,” said Green, who was a senior adviser to the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration.
The summit came on the final day of Biden’s five-day visit to Japan and South Korea, Biden’s first trip to Asia as president.
It was also the first appearance on the world stage of new Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The new prime minister flew to Tokyo on Monday immediately after being sworn in. The centre-left Labor Party defeated Prime Minister Scott Morrison over the weekend, ending the Conservative leader’s nine-year reign
Biden, Modi and Kishida welcomed Albanese to the club and expressed their admiration for his determination to join the informal security coalition so soon after taking office.
“I don’t know how you do that,” Biden, who looked a bit weary from his own trip, told Albanese. The US President joked that it’s okay if the new PM falls asleep during the meeting.
Biden was set to meet separately with Albanese and Modi after the quad meet. The four-way partnership has become increasingly relevant as Biden has sought to adjust US foreign policy to focus more on the region and counter the rise of China as an economic and security power. On Monday he held bilateral talks with summit host Kishida.
Albanese told his fellow Quad leaders that he was committed to the group’s mission of upholding a free and open Indo-Pacific.
“We had a change of government in Australia but Australia’s commitment to the quad has not changed and will not change,” Albanese said.
Floating over the Quad leaders’ talks Monday was Biden’s blunt statement that the US would intervene militarily if China invaded Taiwan, saying the burden of protecting Taiwan was “even greater” after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine . The White House insists Biden’s unusually forceful comments on Taiwan have not resulted in a change in US policy towards the self-governing island that China claims as its own.
When asked by reporters at Tuesday’s summit whether his comments on Taiwan a day earlier should mark a policy shift, Biden simply replied, “No.”
A few modest initiatives were announced by Quad leaders, including a new effort to make pediatric COVID-19 vaccines available to countries most in need and a program to help nations improve the safety and environmental awareness of their territorial waters.
The Quad last year pledged to donate 1.2 billion doses of vaccines worldwide. To date, the group has provided about 257 million doses, according to the Biden administration.
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller in Washington, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo, and Ashok Sharma in New Delhi contributed coverage