Russian President Putin planning to attend G20 summit in Bali
YEREVAN, August 19. /ARKA/. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are planning to attend the G20 summit in person in Bali, Indonesia, scheduled for November, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said in an interview with Bloomberg News.
"Xi Jinping is coming. President Putin has also told me that he will come," Widodo said. He confirmed for the first time that both leaders intend to attend the event, Russian RBC reported.
China's Foreign Ministry did not respond to Bloomberg's question about the plans of Xi Jinping, who has not traveled abroad since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The Kremlin declined to comment, but a source familiar with the situation, confirmed that Putin is planning to attend the summit.
The day before, Widodo spoke to Putin by phone. According to the Kremlin press service, among other things they discussed also preparations for the Bali summit. There was no mention of Putin's possible plan to come to the island. The presidents met in person in Moscow in late June.
If the trip takes place, it would be the first time since the start of Russia's military operation in Ukraine that Putin would meet Western leaders in person - since late February he has only communicated with some of them by phone (German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron). Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer visited Moscow in April.
Bloomberg also points out that a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was invited to the summit by Widodo is also not ruled out. Mikhail Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, earlier stressed in a BBC interview that Zelensky believes he should be in Ukraine during hostilities; at the same time, he did not rule out that the head of state would attend the summit if Putin would be there too. The Kremlin said that there were no prerequisites for a meeting between the two presidents.
Indonesian authorities said they had invited Putin to the summit back in April, but the Kremlin's response was not officially announced until June 27.
"Yes, we have confirmed that our participation is envisaged. We responded positively, we responded that we were interested in participating," Putin’s aide Yury Ushakov reported. He later said that the format of Putin's participation (in person or via video link) in the summit would be determined immediately before it.
The summit will be held on November 15-16. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has already promised to "siege" Putin when she meets him at the event, if she becomes prime minister.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen called the meeting an opportunity to "tell Putin what we think," saying the Russian president's presence would give him a better understanding of the West's position. -0-
