Putin, whose attack on Ukraine in the past nine months has devastated the European country and rocked the world economy, refused to attend any of the diplomatic meetings and instead came under significant censorship as the opposition international support for their war seemed to harden.
A meeting of Group of 20 (G20) leaders in Bali earlier this week ended with a statement referencing nations’ positions expressed in other forums, including a UN resolution deploring “in the terms more energetic” the Russian aggression against Ukraine, while noting different points of view.
And as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit draws to a close in Bangkok on Saturday, the leaders of its 21 economies appear poised to make a similar expression.
On Friday, the foreign ministers of those economies agreed for the first time after months of meetings and discussions on their own joint statement, which echoed verbatim language laid out in Bali earlier this week, and paves the way for APEC leaders do the same as their meeting ends on Saturday.
“Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed that it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy,” the document said, adding that there were different “assessments” of the situation within the group. .
Discussions within the summits aside, the week has also shown Putin, who is believed to have launched his invasion in a bid to restore Russia’s supposed former glory, as increasingly isolated, with the Russian leader entrenched in Moscow and unwilling even to face their counterparts. at major world meetings.
The fear of possible political maneuvers against him should he leave the capital, the obsession with personal security and the desire to avoid confrontational scenes at the summits, especially when Russia faces heavy losses on the battlefield, were all calculations. likely to have entered Putin’s assessment, according to Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
In the meantime, he may not want to focus unwanted attention on the handful of nations that have remained friendly to Russia, for example India and China, whose leaders Putin saw at a summit in Uzbekistan in September.
“He doesn’t want to be this toxic guy,” Gabuev said.
View hardening
But even among countries that have not taken a hard line against Russia, there are signs of losing patience, if not with Russia itself, than with the fallout from its aggression. Strained energy, food security issues and spiraling global inflation are now squeezing economies around the world.
Indonesia, which hosted the G20, did not explicitly condemn Russia for the invasion, but its president, Joko Widodo, told world leaders on Tuesday that “we must end the war.”
India, which has been a key buyer of energy from Russia even as the West has rejected Russian fuel in recent months, also called on G20 leaders earlier this week to “find a way to get back on the ceasefire path.” . The summit’s final declaration includes a sentence that reads: “Today’s era must not be one of war,” language that echoes what Modi told Putin in September, when they met on the sidelines of a summit in regional security in Uzbekistan.
It is less clear whether China, whose strategic partnership with Russia is bolstered by a close relationship between leader Xi Jinping and Putin, has reached any change in position. Beijing has long refused to condemn the invasion, or even refer to it as such. Instead, he has denounced Western sanctions and amplified Kremlin talking points blaming the US and NATO for the conflict, though this rhetoric appears to have scaled back somewhat in his state-controlled domestic media in recent months. .
However, in side meetings with Western leaders last week, Xi reiterated China’s call for a ceasefire through dialogue and, according to interlocutors’ readings, agreed to oppose the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but those comments they are not included in China’s report on the talks.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi later told Chinese state media that Xi had reiterated China’s position in his meeting with US President Joe Biden that “nuclear weapons cannot be used.” and you can’t fight nuclear war.”
But China’s foreign policy watchers say its desire to maintain strong ties with Russia is likely to remain unwavering.
“While these statements are indirect criticism of Vladimir Putin, I don’t think they are aimed at distancing China from Russia,” said Brian Hart, a fellow at the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Xi is saying these things to an audience that wants to hear them.”
split screen
However, the Russian isolation seems even more severe against the backdrop of Xi’s diplomatic tour in Bali and Bangkok this week.
Although the Biden administration has named Beijing, not Moscow, the “most serious long-term challenge” to the world order, Xi was treated by Western leaders as a valued global partner, many of whom met with the Chinese leader to hold conversations with the aim of increasing communication and cooperation.
Referring to the competition between the United States and China and the growing confrontation in the regional waters of Asia, Macron said: “What makes this war different is that it is an aggression against international rules. All countries… have stability due to international rules,” before calling out Russia. return “to the table” and “respect the international order”.
The urgency of that sentiment increased after a Russian-made missile landed in Poland, killing two people on Wednesday, the last day of the G20 summit. As a NATO member, a threat to Polish security could trigger a bloc-wide response.
The situation calmed down after the initial investigation suggested that the missile came from the Ukrainian side by accident during the missile defense, but highlighted the possibility that a miscalculation triggered a world war.
A day after that situation, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pointed to what he called a “split screen.”
“What we are seeing is a very revealing split screen: as the world works to help the most vulnerable people, Russia attacks them; as leaders around the world reaffirm our commitment to the United Nations Charter and international norms that benefit all our peoples”. President Putin continues to try to destroy those very principles,” Blinken told reporters Thursday night in Bangkok.
Consensus?
As the week of the international gathering began, the US and its allies were ready to project that message to their international peers. And although strong messages have been made, it has not been easy to reach a consensus around that point of view, and the differences persist.
The G20 statement and the APEC ministerial-level statement acknowledge divisions between how members voted at the UN to support their resolution “deploring” Russian aggression, and say that while most members “strongly condemned” the war, “There were other points of view and different assessments of the situation and sanctions.”
Even making such an expression with caveats was an arduous process at both summits, according to the officials. Indonesia’s Jokowi said G20 leaders were up until “midnight” discussing the paragraph on Ukraine.
The nations in the groupings have various geostrategic and economic relationships with Russia, which impact their positions. But another concern some Asian nations may have is whether the moves to censor Russia are part of a US push to weaken Moscow, according to former Thai Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon.
“Countries are saying that we don’t want to be just a pawn in this game to weaken another power,” said Suphamongkhon, a member of the advisory board of the RAND Corporation Center for Asia Pacific Policy (CAPP). Instead, framing Russia’s censure around its “violation of international law and war crimes that may have been committed” would affect aspects of the situation that “everyone here rejects,” he said.
Russia’s rejection of that may also send a message to China, which has scoffed at an international ruling refuting its territorial claims in the South China Sea and has vowed to “reunify” with autonomous democracy Taiwan, which has never checked. , by force if necessary.
While this week’s efforts may have increased the pressure on Putin, the Russian leader has experience with such dynamics: Before Putin’s ouster over his 2014 annexation of Crimea in Ukraine, the Group of Seven (G7) bloc it was the Group of Eight, and it remains to be seen if international expressions will have an impact.
But without Putin in the fold, the leaders stressed this week, the suffering will continue and there will be a hole in the international system.
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