It took exhausted Indian diplomats 200 hours of non-stop negotiations, 300 bilateral meetings and 15 drafts, but in the end the G20 countries reached a consensus declaration on the war in Ukraine – one that largely retreated into generalised principles rather than the specific condemnation of Russia that the same group of leaders agreed when they met in Bali a year ago.
Moreover, no invitation was extended to Ukrainie’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to address the gathering, meaning the only direct combatant around the table was Russia, represented by its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
India is already hailing the agreement as a diplomatic triumph, one that was tied up at least 24 hours before the summit closed. Going into the summit, there had been three options facing the leaders: a lowest-common-denominator agreement (the eventual outcome), a statement with footnotes allowing some countries to disown parts of the agreement, or no declaration.
The agreement admits blandly that there are different assessments of the situation, but upholds the principles of national sovereignty, the UN charter, previous UN resolutions on Ukraine, and describes the use of nuclear weapons as impermissible. Critically, it does not repeat the statement in Bali that most countries condemn Russia’s invasion, or that Russia should withdraw its troops unconditionally and immediately.
India’s external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, did not seem too bothered to justify the outcome. “Bali was Bali. New Delhi is Delhi. Bali was a year ago, the situation was different. Many things have happened since then,” he said.
The outcome obviously reflects India’s rigid determination not to take sides in the war, but it is extraordinary that the majority of countries at the G20 that do oppose Russia’s war of conquest were so prepared to be muzzled by the minority that prefer to look away.
A UK official said the joint declaration, widely seen as weak, was in fact effective at putting pressure on Moscow. “By achieving consensus in New Delhi, the G20 has forced [Vladimir] Putin to commit to a cessation of attacks on infrastructure, to the withdrawal of troops and to the return of territory,” they said.
Lavrov, unsurprisingly, did not share this interpretation. “We were able to prevent the west’s attempts to ‘Ukrainise’ the summit agenda,” the veteran diplomat said, calling the two-day gathering a success. He pointed out: “The text doesn’t mention Russia at all.”
The compromise must be hard for Ukraine to take, and will only increase its nervousness that the next diplomatic staging post – an EU decision on Ukraine’s accession in December– will be equally empty. The Ukrainian foreign ministry said the G20 had “nothing to be proud of”.
At one level, the outcome is supremely irrelevant to the war. Nothing really has changed. Drones are still directed towards Kyiv, Ukrainian defence ministers are still calling for more and heavier weapons, and…
2023-09-10 08:01:35
Post from www.theguardian.com