US-Russia Pulse Exposes Fractures Within the Group of Twenty

The heads of diplomacy of the United States and Russia met face to face on Thursday during the second day of the G20 Summit, a meeting that hosted in New Delhi the foreign ministers of the 20 main economies of the world. This is the first meeting between the American Antony Blinken and the Russian Sergei Lavrov since the start of the war in Ukraine.

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Blinken and Lavrov spoke on the sidelines of the G20, an event that ended without a joint statement over the objections of Moscow and Beijing. Both powers say the West resorts to “threats” and “blackmail” to impose their views. This episode revealed the fissures that exist today between the West due to the Russian invasion of Ukrainian soil.

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“I told the (Russian) foreign minister what I and so many others have said at the UN and what so many foreign ministers have said at the G20: end this aggressive war, engage in diplomacy that can produce a just peace,” Blinken told reporters.

Their previous face-to-face meeting took place in January 2022, a few weeks before Moscow is due to launch its offensive in Ukraine on February 24. The meeting lasted less than 10 minutes, according to a US official who requested anonymity. Blinken, however, also added that he told his Russian counterpart that Washington will continue to support Kiev for as long as it takes.

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Meanwhile, before his G20 counterparts, the head of Russian diplomacy lashed out at “the obscene behavior of a number of Western delegations, which turned work on the G20 agenda into a farce,” according to the TASS agency.

AFP