Putin To Skip G20 summit

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Facts

  • Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin won't attend the G20 summit of the world's largest economies in Bali, Indonesia in person next week, officials in Moscow and Jakarta said Thursday. It will be the first meeting of G20 leaders since the start of the Ukraine war.
  • Russia will send Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov instead, while the Russian leader is reportedly set to participate in one of the G20 meetings virtually. In recent months, Western leaders had called on Jakarta to exclude Putin from the summit amid the Ukraine war.
  • However, after a phone call with Putin, Indonesian president and summit host Joko Widodo stated last week that the Russian leader remained welcomed at the bloc's meeting — but would likely not attend. Widodo said the G20 summit isn't a "political forum" and expressed concern that it could be overshadowed by geopolitical tensions.
  • Meanwhile, Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom Jakarta also invited to the summit, recently said he wouldn't attend if Putin were present. Other leaders who will join the meeting, which begins Nov. 15, include Chinese Pres. Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden.
  • Biden, who months ago called Putin a "war criminal," most recently ruled out G20 talks with Putin on the Ukraine war, saying he would only be willing to discuss the release of US citizens imprisoned by Russia as part of a possible prisoner swap.
  • The G20 summit is the largest of three meetings to be held in Southeast Asia in the coming days. On Thursday, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit began in Cambodia, followed by the G20 Summit and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Thailand.

Sources: Al Jazeera, Washington Post, Financial Times, France24, Bloomberg, and ABC.

Narratives

  • Anti-Russia narrative, as provided by Moscow Times. Putin's decision not to attend the G20 summit underscores his increasing isolation amid his unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine. Likely scared to face Western leaders, Putin — who would have had nothing productive to contribute — preferred to evade this uncomfortable reality.
  • Pro-Russia narrative, as provided by Global Times. Washington and its allies have already hijacked previous G20 meetings to claim a moral high ground over Russia and denounce it for the Ukraine war — and this summit won't be any different. Given Washington's hypocrisy and the West's lack of interest in using the G20 to discuss the world's many current problems in a cooperative spirit, Putin's decision not to attend is perfectly understandable.