The Diplomat
Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares will participate this at the G20 ministerial meeting, to be held July 7-8 in Bali, Indonesia, where he could coincide with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
A spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Jakarta assured Reuters last week that Lavrov intends to attend the meeting with his G20 counterparts. At the moment there is no official confirmation from Moscow and the Indonesian Foreign Ministry has no information on the matter. Diplomatic sources consulted by The Diplomat have not been able to clarify either these extremes or the possible consequences of the Russian minister’s presence in Bali.
The ministerial meeting will take place four months before the G20 Summit, to which both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have been invited. Both invitations were personally extended by Indonesian President Joko Widolo, who recently traveled to Ukraine and Russia to meet with the two leaders.
n his meeting with Putin, Joko (as he is commonly known) conveyed to Putin, in addition to the invitation, “a message from President Zelenski” (the content of which has not been disclosed) and Indonesia’s offer to “establish communication between the two leaders” in order to push for a peaceful solution to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Kremlin’s advisor for International Affairs, Yuri Ushakov, assured last week that Putin had accepted the invitation and had planned, in principle, to come to Bali in November to participate in the Summit, but Joko Widodo subsequently assured during the G7 Summit (in which he participated as a guest together with India, Senegal, South Africa and Argentina) that the Russian president will not travel to his country, as reported last Tuesday by the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, during the press conference following the G7 meeting in Elmau (Germany). “President Widodo excludes it, he has been categorical, he will not travel,” although “he may intervene remotely,” Draghi declared.
Indonesia, as the rotating leader of the G20 (an organization sharply divided over the Russia-Ukraine conflict), has expressly opted for neutrality. Several Western countries have threatened to boycott the Summit in the event of Putin’s attendance and, in fact, representatives of the US, UK and Canada walked out of a G20 finance meeting last April in protest at the presence of a Russian delegation.
For his part, Zelenski announced last week that his presence in Bali will depend on the security situation in his country by then and on the leaders attending the meeting. “I appreciate the personal invitation to participate in the G20 summit. Of course, I accept the invitation. Ukraine’s participation will depend on the security situation in Ukraine and the composition of the summit participants,” he told UNIAN news agency.
