Russian President Vladimir Putin will not personally attend the G20 summit in Bali next week.
This was reported by the Russian embassy in Indonesia in a comment to CNN. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will represent Putin.
It is likely that Putin’s decision allows him to avoid a potential confrontation with other world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, who previously called the Russian president a “war criminal”. Presumably, the Kremlin also did not want to risk European leaders avoiding Putin.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that his position remains unchanged, and Ukraine will not participate in the G20 summit in Bali if the president of the Russian Federation, Putin, is there.
Therefore, Putin’s visit was canceled to avoid potential high-level tensions due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Earlier, Biden stated that the Russian Federation should be excluded from the G20 due to the invasion of the territory of Ukraine. Back in March, he stressed that the Russian invasion had provoked the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II, while Moscow had meanwhile resorted to nuclear blackmail.
BACKGROUND: The G20 summit will be held in Bali and will be the most anticipated multinational gathering in recent years. In 2022, a full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war tested Europe and strained the economy to the brink of recession. During the meeting, there will be not only representatives of rich democracies, but also several autocracies.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine demanded that the Russian Federation be excluded from the list of invitees to the summit and deprived of the right to membership in the G20.
Also, at the end of October, US President Joe Biden did not intend to meet with Putin during the Bali summit. This was announced by the coordinator of the US National Security Council for strategic communications, John Kirby.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Great Britain believes that the Russian Federation has no moral right to participate in the G20 leaders’ summit, which will be held in Bali in November.
