Vladimir Putin will not attend a gathering of leaders from the G20 nations in Bali next week, Indonesian and Russian officials confirmed on Thursday, ending weeks of speculation about a possible confrontation with the US president, Joe Biden.
Russia’s president will be represented by his veteran foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, officials said. “President Putin’s programme is still being worked out; he could participate virtually,” said Yulia Tomskaya, the chief of protocol as the Russian embassy in Indonesia.Putin may have wanted to avoid potentially explosive showdowns with western leaders including Biden, events that Russian media might have been unable to present to his benefit.
Biden and Putin have only met once during Biden’s presidency, at a summit in Geneva in the summer of 2021. As Russia subsequently threatened to invade Ukraine, the two men spoke several times – the last of which was in February, just days before the war began.
But it is just as likely that Putin did not relish the prospect of his two chief allies in the region – the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi – urging him to negotiate a peace that might be disadvantageous to him. Neither men want to side with the US, but Xi has sent him warnings against threatening nuclear war.
Ironically at one point it was possible that it would be western leaders that would boycott the two-day summit, one of the most important in-person diplomatic encounters since the Covid pandemic. Western finance ministers walked out of an April G20 meeting to show their opposition to Russia’s presence.
But with the west still battling to persuade the so-called global south of the need to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty, it was judged better that western leaders attend, even though no breakthrough on Ukraine or the world economy is likely, so much so that a joint communique may be impossible to craft. There had also been fierce resistance from the Indonesian hosts to withdrawing an invitation to Russia.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, said Russia was welcome at the summit, which he feared would be overshadowed by a “very worrying” rise in international tensions.
“The G20 is not meant to be a political forum. It’s meant to be about economics and development,” he was quoted as saying. But Indonesia has also invited Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has said he would not take part if Putin does and was expected to join virtually.
Biden has already said he will try to use the summit to discuss red lines with China, a reference to the American demand that Xi renounce any plan to invade Taiwan. At a press conference on Wednesday night Biden did not voice his frequent break with official US policy by saying the US would come to the military protection of Taiwan in the event of an invasion. Biden may want to reopen talks on climate change.
Zelenskiy is likely to use an address to the summit to highlight the way Russia has taken tens of thousands of Ukrainians effective hostage by transporting them into Russia. In an address on Thursday, Zelenskiy stuck to his demands for a peace settlement, saying: “Once again: restoration of territorial integrity, respect for the UN charter, compensation for all the damage caused by the war, punishment for every war criminal and guarantees that this will not happen again.”
Speculation that Biden – on whom Zelenksy is militarily and financially dependent – will force a compromise on Ukraine grew in the runup to the US midterm elections, but the Republicans party’s relatively poor showing will make it easier for the White House to push through requests for financial assistance.
Putin’s absence does not reduce the chances of a spectacular showdown. At a meeting of G20 foreign ministers in July, Lavrov staged a walkout after telling his counterparts that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was not responsible for a global hunger crisis and that sanctions designed to isolate Russia amounted to a declaration of war.
The G20 Summit will be preceded by a meeting of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) leaders attended by Biden starting on Thursday in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and due to end on Saturday. After the G20, Thailand hosts an Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit, but Putin is likely to skip this as well. Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, will attend the Apec meeting.
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