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Putin’s G20 attendance calls for contingency plans
Russian President Vladimir Putin's intention to show up in person at the upcoming G20 Summit in Bali has stoked fears of renewed pushback from Western member states.
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President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin head for a joint press conference at Kremlin in Moscow on June 30.
(Presidential Secretariat Press Bureau/Laily Rachev)
As the Group of 20 Summit quickly approaches, fresh calls to bar Russia from attending the meetings were received by Indonesia, the most recent coming from the United Kingdom last week. In anticipation of a combative mood likely to dominate in November, experts have called on the Foreign Ministry to gear up with “careful negotiation skills” to keep the summit on track.
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent in Russian security forces to invade Ukraine in late February, Indonesia has received its fair share of pressure from several G20 members from the Western bloc to bar the leader from attending the summit in Bali. Yet, Jakarta has held out and insisted that it would stay “neutral”, extending invitations to both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in late April, much to the chagrin of Putin’s international rivals.
On Friday, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said during an interview with Bloomberg that the Kremlin leader “had told [Jokowi] that he will be attending” the G20 Summit.
The UK, despite having previously encouraged its Western counterparts to refrain from boycotting the summit under Boris Johnson’s premiership, is now divided on its official stance following Johnson’s resignation in early July.
A spokesperson for the UK’s foreign ministry said that Moscow has “no moral right” to attend the G20 so long as it continues its invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported. The British foreign ministry is currently headed by Liz Truss, who is in the running to become the next premier.
Then, Rishi Sunak, a parliament member also contesting to fill Johnson’s position, said through his spokesperson that “sitting round a table with [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is not good enough when he is responsible for children being killed”, while calling for Russia to be barred from attending the event.
Lina Alexandra, a senior researcher at the Centre of Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) international relations department, told The Jakarta Post that the possibility of another boycott post-Johnson’s resignation is “always” present.
