President Putin may visit India for G20 summit, though no decision made yet — Kremlin

Russian President Vladimir Putin may attend the G-20 summit in India in September, but no decision has yet been made, his spokesperson said on Monday.

“It cannot be ruled out,” Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked if Putin’s participation in the summit in India in September was being considered.

“But no decision has been made yet,” Peskov was quoted as saying by the state-run Tass news agency.

“Russia continues its full participation in the G20 format, we intend to continue it,” Peskov added.

The Russian delegation at the G20 leaders’ forum in Bali, Indonesia last year was headed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In 2020 and 2021 Putin attended the G20 summits via video link.

The G20 Leaders’ Summit is scheduled to be held on September 9 and 10 in New Delhi.

G20 or the Group of 20 is an intergovernmental forum of the world’s major developed and developing economies.

The members represent around 85 per cent of the global GDP, over 75 per cent of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population.

The grouping comprises Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the UK, the US and the European Union (EU).

Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Lavrov attended a two-day meeting of the G20 foreign ministers in New Delhi.

The meeting took place amid Russia’s escalating confrontation with the Western powers over the Ukraine conflict and India’s diplomatic tightrope walk on the issue.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, Germany’s Annalena Baerbock and British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also attended the meeting.

During a press conference on the sidelines of the meeting, Lavrov hailed India’s “highly responsible” and “worthy of a great power” stance on key matters on the global agenda.

“The final document was not adopted by the ministers because the Western countries insisted on the text that was agreed at the G20 summit last year in Bali. They were ignoring completely our argument that since then a lot has changed, a lot has happened,” Lavrov said.

The G20 foreign ministers’ meeting was unable to come out with a joint communique due to bitterly increasing rift between the US-led Western powers and Russia over the Ukraine conflict. Moscow, March 13 (PTI)