An unexpected meeting between American Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, on the sidelines of a meeting of the G20 heads of diplomacy, will not be enough to save this meeting, organized in New Delhi on Thursday 2 March. For the first time since the start of the war in Ukraine, the two men spoke face to face. During this meeting, which lasted only a few minutes, the head of American diplomacy specifically asked his interlocutor to put it down “end this war of aggression”.

The war in Ukraine will weigh on all G20 discussions with no real sign of progress. For the second time in less than a week, Member States have failed to find a consensus and sign a joint statement, testifying to the irreconcilable rift that runs through the group. China and Russia oppose the two paragraphs of the November 2022 Bali (Indonesia) declaration condemning Moscow’s aggression and calling for it specifically “for complete and unconditional withdrawal” Russian troops from Ukraine. Finance ministers, meet on 25 February in Bangalore, too, could not overcome their differences of opinion on the matter.

India, which is a historic ally of Russia and a partner of the West in countering China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific, will be president of this year’s G20. For more than a year, New Delhi has been playing a dangerous balancing act on the diplomatic scene. He has never explicitly condemned Russian aggression, refraining from voting for such a resolution at the United Nations, but Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has publicly told Russian President Vladimir Putin that ” time [n’était] not for war on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in September 2022. At the same time, India is providing humanitarian support to Ukraine and Mr. Modi has spoken on the phone several times with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Southern voices

As the host of the G20, the South Asian giants are in a difficult position. Throughout its presidency, which will end in September with a summit of heads of state, India will have to try to reconcile antipodal positions. Opening the foreign ministers’ meeting on Thursday, India’s prime minister called on attendees to overcome their divisions. “As you meet in the land of Gandhi and the Buddha, I pray that you will be inspired by the ethos of Indian civilization – to focus not on what separates us, but on what unites us”he said in a video broadcast at the opening of the meeting, judging, given the financial crisis, climate change or even war, that global governance had failed.

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