By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Host of the ongoing G20 Summit, Indonesia on Friday urged foreign ministers of the group to help end the war in Ukraine.
This comes as Russia’s top diplomat accused the West of frustrating a chance to tackle global economic issues with “frenzied” criticism of the conflict.
The war in Ukraine and its impact on the global economy, has occupied a centre stage in the G20 ministers’ meeting in Bali, Indonesia while top officials from Western countries and Japan insist it would not be a “business as usual” event.
Shouts of “When will you stop the war” and “Why don’t you stop the war” were heard as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shook hands with his Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi as he arrived for the meeting.
Lavrov said ministers from Western nations “strayed almost immediately, as soon as they took the floor, to the frenzied criticism of the Russian Federation in connection with the situation in Ukraine”.
“Aggressors’, ‘invaders’, ‘occupiers’ – we heard a lot of things today,” Lavrov told reporters after the first session of the talks, in which he was seated between representatives from Mexico and Saudi Arabia. read more
Russia has maintained it has launched a “special military operation” to degrade the Ukrainian military and root out people it calls dangerous nationalists.
Ukraine and its Western backers say Russia is engaged in an imperial-style land grab. They say Russia has no justification for the invasion.
Retno had called on the G20 to “find a way forward” to address global challenges and said the repercussions of the war, including rising energy and food prices, would hit low-income countries the hardest.
“It is our responsibility to end the war sooner than later and settle our differences at the negotiating table, not at the battlefield,” Retno said at the opening of talks.
Challenges related to rising food and energy costs had been “dramatically exacerbated by Russian aggression against Ukraine”, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on the sidelines of the meeting.
During the plenary meeting, Blinken confronted Russia about blocking the export of Ukrainian grain and stealing it, a Western official said.
“He addressed Russia directly, saying: To our Russian colleagues: Ukraine is not your country. Its grain is not your grain. Why are you blocking the ports? You should let the grain out'”, the official said.
Lavrov was not in the room at the time, the official said.
