Russia's Foreign Minister Lavrov to attend G20 Summit in India

MOSCOW: Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will attend the G20 Summit in India next week after President Vladimir Putin announced his plan to skip the leaders' Summit. Under India's presidency, the G20 (Group of Twenty) Summit is scheduled to take place on September 9 and 10 and the theme-- “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” or “One Earth · One Family · One Future” - is drawn from the ancient Sanskrit text of the Maha Upanishad.

According to the statement, released by the Russian Foreign Ministry, Lavrov is expected to attend two plenary sessions: on September 9, there will be the One Planet session on sustainable development and promoting steady economic growth, and on September 10, the Foreign Minister will speak at the One Future session highlighting key matters of promoting democracy and strengthening the role of the countries belonging to the global majority within global economic governance institutions, as well as achieving digital transformation. Sergey Lavrov is scheduled to hold several bilateral talks and contacts on the sidelines of the summit.

"We would like to note the unifying nature of India’s G20 Presidency, the country’s commitment to promoting the interests of the developing countries and creating a constructive atmosphere at the forum. The summit is expected to make a decision on accepting the African Union as a permanent G20 member. We welcome this step. Russia was among the first to support this initiative and contributed to carrying it out," Russia's Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in the briefing, as per the statement.

"The policy of confrontation adopted by the collective West has been creating artificial roadblocks that prevent the G20 from unleashing its creative potential. Efforts by the United States and its allies to spread anti-Russia and anti-China information, primarily in the context of Ukraine, have been a special source of tension," she added.

The Spokesperson further stated that Russia refers to this phenomenon as the Ukrainisation of the international agenda, meaning a refusal to recognise the actual challenges related to the Ukraine crisis, its causes and ways to settle it, while seeking to place this topic on top of the agenda everywhere even when it has no place in the discussion.

The West’s attempts to devalue a consensus rule within the G20 and to extend questionable G7 agreements to this forum as binding commitments have given rise to alarming trends. The Anglo-Saxons are cooking up all kinds of dirty tricks, she said.

"At the Summit, Russia intends to promote its principled vision of ways of achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) and addressing key challenges in this regard, including the West’s efforts to destabilise the global economy through sanctions, terrorist attacks inspired by the West, conflicts and supply chain disruptions," the statement read.

"We (Russia) will share our assessment of the risks related to precipitating the transition to a green economy, especially for the most vulnerable countries of the world. The West has succeeded in making environmental protection an extremely partisan and polarising issue. This is not just an irresponsible attitude but a harmful one as well, since this position is not backed by research," it added.

Russia is committed to making the Delhi summit a success and ensuring that the Indian G20 Presidency is effective. Russia hoped that all other G20 members, especially those representing the West, adopt the same responsible attitude. "We will work with a wide range of friendly partner countries within the G20 and rely on the BRICS countries to counter any detrimental processes in this regard," Zakharova said.