“Ending Russia’s war is a moral imperative and simply the best thing that can be done for the global economy,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Monday.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Monday that ending the war in Ukraine was the best way to address the world economy’s woes, in an apparent message to Russia ahead of the G20 summit in Indonesia.
“Ending Russia’s war is a moral imperative and quite simply the best thing that can be done for the global economy,” Janet Yellen told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting with her French counterpart Bruno Le Maire.
At the same time, Moscow called on the G20, which brings together the world’s largest economies, to focus on economic and financial issues rather than political and security issues.
Putin absent from G20
Officially, the invasion of Ukraine is not on the agenda of the club of the 20 major economies, whose heads of state and government are meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali on Tuesday and Wednesday.
But the war launched nine months ago by Vladimir Putin has had profound economic repercussions, with energy and food prices soaring.
The host of the summit, Indonesia, is thus taking the position of many countries in the South, calling for peace negotiations and refusing to directly condemn Moscow.
Vladimir Putin, who has opted not to go to the G20 and is represented by his chief of diplomacy Sergei Lavrov, is under pressure to extend Ukraine’s existing grain exports deal, which expires on November 19.
For his part, Bruno Le Maire stressed the need to mitigate the economic impact of the conflict. “I think the first issue on the table is how to lower energy prices and eliminate inflation,” said the French economy minister.