Russia, China block condemnation of Ukraine War at G20 summit

Air raid alerts continued nationwide in Ukraine Saturday, as Russia and China blocked a statement from the G20 condemning the war, amid new saber-rattling from a Putin ally.

Finance leaders and central bank chiefs from the world’s largest economies meeting in India strongly condemned Moscow for the invasion a year ago, but Russia and China declined to sign a joint statement.

India, which is currently serving as the G20 chair, was reluctant to raise the issue, but was pressured by Western nations but avoided using the word “war” in the “chair’s summary and outcome document” that two days of negotiations produced.

“Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed that it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy,” the statement said, citing disruption of supply chains, risks to financial stability and continuing energy and food insecurity.

“There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions,” the statement said, referring to measures put in place by the United States, European countries and others to punish Russia for the invasion and to starve it of revenues.

“We just finished a session in which it was clear that there is a commitment to bridge differences for the benefit of countries,” Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and co-chair of the roundtable meeting, told reporters.

The statement, and China’s refusal to condemn Russia, came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he planned to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss Beijing’s proposals for ending the war.

Hours later, China announced that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a key Russian ally, will visit Beijing in the coming week.

Lukashenko, who has allowed Russia to use Belarusian territory to support the invasion, separately said he held a long conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.

“I’ll tell you a secret, last night he and I spoke for a long time on various topics,” a social media channel connected to Lukashenko’s press service quoted him as saying, but offered no further details.

The latest developments followed another round of threats by former Russian president and staunch Putin supporter Dmitry Medvedev, who said pushing back NATO member Poland’s borders will be the only way for Moscow to ensure peace with Ukraine.

Medvedev, the current deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, made the comment on his Telegram channel Friday, the anniversary of Moscow’s invasion.

The 57-year-old politician predicted tense negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, and the West, which would result in “some kind of agreement,” but added that any deal would lack “fundamental agreements on real borders” which makes it important for Russia to expand its own borders now.

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“That is why it is so important to achieve all the goals of the special military operation. To push back the borders that threaten our country as far as possible, even if they are the borders of Poland,” said Medvedev.

Medvedev’s comments came two days after he called for Russian distrust of the U.S. and President Joe Biden, who earlier in the week made a surprise visit to Kyiv to mark the anniversary of the war, before ripping Putin’s “craven lust” for Ukrainian land during a speech in Poland’s capital.

“Biden addressed the Russian people in front of a crowd of Poles,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram Wednesday. “In fact, he delivered a sermon in the traditional messianic key for America, adjusted for senile insanity. Heaped high words about how important it is to defend democracy, and that the US is not going to attack Russia. It looked dishonest and ridiculous.

Poland shares an approximately 125-mile border with the northeastern corner of Russia and also has large eastern borders with Ukraine and Belarus.

Separately on Saturday, Zelensky on Saturday told German officials that economic connections alone were unable to keep Russian tanks at bay.

Instead, Zelensky called for unity, which he hailed as the only working strategy against Moscow’s invasion in a video address. “Diplomacy did not work,” Zelensky said. “The existing security architecture in the world did not work. The old European hope that economic ties could keep Russian tank columns from moving did not work.”

“But there was something that did work,” he added. “First of all, unity. Unity of Ukraine, Germany, and the entire free world.”