Reproduction: Commons 04/18/2022
Representatives of each G20 country
Several Western officials walked out of a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors on Wednesday as Russian representative Anton Siluanov began to speak.
The boycott exposes growing divisions over Russia’s membership in the group, which is the result of an offensive in Ukraine authorized by Vladimir Putin’s government.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, as well as officials from Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Canada were among those who left the boardroom as representatives of the Russian delegation took the floor.
According to diplomatic sources, the European Union’s Economics Commissioner, Italian Paolo Gentiloni, also left the meeting during the Russian minister’s speech. He had previously highlighted “the EU’s strong condemnation of Russia’s military aggression”.
For the former Italian prime minister, “the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the global economy is significant” and “the high level of uncertainty and negative risks to the global recovery underscore the need for strong economic policy coordination”.
European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde asked the country’s Deputy Finance Minister Timur Maksimov to send a clear message to Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
For his part, Siluanov urged his G20 partners to avoid politicizing the dialogue, stressing that the group “has always been and will remain the first economic format”.
“We have never refused to honor our commitments and our contracts. It is obvious that the supply of energy and agricultural products on the international markets is artificially limited, which leads to an imbalance and a sharp rise in prices,” the Russian minister stressed, noting that the rise in prices will mainly affect developing countries and economies meet low income.
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