MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin is not planning to make a video address at the upcoming G20 summit in New Delhi this weekend, the Kremlin said Thursday.
The meeting comes amid fraught relations between Moscow and the West over the conflict in Ukraine, which caused deep tensions at last year’s summit in Bali.
Asked whether Putin would make a separate video address, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “No, there are no plans.”
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He said “all the work” would be led by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is leading Russia’s delegation.
Lavrov also represented Russia at August’s BRICS meeting in Johannesburg, following a row over whether South Africa would be forced to arrest Putin under an International Criminal Court warrant.
In the end Putin made an address by video-link, in which he blamed the West for the conflict in Ukraine.
Putin’s invitations to international summits has angered some Western nations, which have sought to cast him as a pariah over Moscow’s actions in Ukraine.
Deep disagreements over the conflict, the phasing out of fossil fuels and debt restructuring will likely hamper any agreements being made at the two-day meeting in New Delhi.
China’s Xi Jinping, president of the world’s second-largest economy, will also miss the meeting, at a time of tensions with the United States and India, with which it shares a disputed border.
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