Press release on Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's forthcoming participation in the G20 Summit
8 September 2023 11:57
1725-08-09-2023
On September 9-10, the G20 Summit will be held in New Delhi, India. The Russian delegation to the summit will be led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, at the instruction of President Vladimir Putin. Most of the leaders of the G20 member countries, invited states and heads of international organisations are expected to attend this year's event. Almost all of them have already confirmed their participation.
With India's presidency of the organisation reflecting the One Earth, One Family, One Future theme, its priorities include stimulating discussions among the world's major economies on global economic growth and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the energy and food crises, climate change, and digital transformation. In addition, New Delhi is concentrating on the global economic governance reform, improving international healthcare mechanisms, empowering women and promoting their involvement in the economy. These subjects will set the tone during the New Delhi leaders' meeting.
Other issues on the agenda include the modern challenges to energy and food security, disruptions in supply chains and destabilisation of financial the financial sector. Many of these events have been primarily provoked by sanctions, threats to collective security and terrorist attacks caused by the Western countries supporting the Kiev regime, and numerous economic miscalculations of the United States and the EU. The West's resistance to the formation of a truly polycentric world order, as well as the dismantling of the system, built by the West, of unfair distribution of benefits and exploitation of the global majority's resources and potential, has done serious damage to the global economy.
India has repeatedly stated that the G20 should not focus solely on the Western countries' priorities, including at the level of the country's leadership and leading government agencies. One of the main goals of the country's presidency is to empower developing economies and promote their role in global affairs. In this vein, the Voice of the Global South Summit was held on January 12 and 13 under the auspices of the Indian presidency.
The initiative to grant full membership to the African Union is one of the highlights of the upcoming summit. Russia was one of the first to support our African partners' application. The regional association is scheduled to be admitted to G20 at the New Delhi summit; a relevant clause has been included in the draft declaration of the leaders.
We proceed from the premise that by joint efforts, Russia and the African Union can make an important contribution to democratising the international financial and trade institutions and give an additional impetus to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals and eliminating all kinds of disparities and gaps in industry, science, and technology. The results of the Second Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum held in St Petersburg on July 27-28 will provide a firm basis for this comprehensive interaction.
The Indian presidency hopes to achieve consensus-based agreements at the New Delhi Summit. The path towards this goal is viewed through the prism of India's international prestige and its deserved recognition for the diplomatic efforts to take into account the interests of both advanced states and countries with emerging markets which it undertook during its presidency. The leaders' declaration is expected to be the main practical outcome.
Along with other multilateral formats, the G20 is exposed to the negative impacts of geopolitical frictions and a split in the international community, as well as the Western states' unilateral approaches intended to ram through their confrontational initiatives. A constructive dialogue on sector-specific topics often gives way to politicised discussions and an unproductive give-and-take. Since 2022, the Western countries have consistently sought to put Ukraine on the G20 agenda, using, among other things, the specialised tracks as a means for imposing their geopolitical vision and thereby impairing constructive solutions to related problems.
The G7 countries (primarily the US, the UK, Germany, and France) have been exerting pressure on India in a bid to have their unilateral approaches to the Ukraine situation reflected in the final documents of G20 forums. Against this background, India seeks to steer a neutral course, based on the G20's purely economic mandate. India has rejected all Western demands to invite Ukraine to participate in the meetings in this format, thereby preventing the United States and its allies from offsetting the important practical achievements of New Delhi's one-year watch by their time-seeking considerations.
Under the Indian presidency, the G20 has an intense working schedule and a packed agenda. A total of over 200 official events will be held in more than 50 cities across the country. For the first time in G20 history, New Delhi sponsored an international conference on Crime and Security in the Age of NFTs, AI and the Metaverse (Gurugram, July 13-14). An Indian initiative launched the Working Group on Disaster Risk Reduction, whose performance was assessed by the heads of related agencies, who met in Chennai on July 24-25 of this year. The G20's earlier Research and Innovation Initiative Gathering has been transformed into the G20 Research and Innovation Working Group. The related ministerial meeting took place in Mumbai on July 5-6.
The G20 consists of 19 countries: Russia, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, the Republic of South Africa, South Korea, Türkiye, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the European Union. They account for 80 percent of the global GDP, international trade and greenhouse gas emissions and for two-thirds of the planet's population. In addition, they exercise supervisory functions, and have critical influence on capital and trade flows, technological progress and global economic governance. The G20's advantages are determined by the line-up of its leaders, the critical mass of resources and a wide range of members. This is the only platform for equitable cooperation between the BRICS countries, the G7 and regional powers, including the African continent, an emerging centre of the multipolar world that abounds in natural resources and boasts a demographic dividend.
The G20 continues focus on responses to macroeconomic challenges and threats, the prevention of global economic crises and setbacks, the preservation of stable markets and efforts to stabilise the financial system. Since 2009, its members have been prioritising efforts to ensure continuous and all-encompassing economic growth. At the same time, they are moving to discuss socioeconomic issues in a comprehensive and interdependent manner. They combine energy and climate issues, the labour market and education, sustainable development and innovation, and emphasise healthcare and digitalisation issues.
Russia occupies a leading position in the G20 and actively influences the pace of talks and their agenda, as well as the content of specific agreements. We perceive this association, a platform for collaboration between developing countries and the G7, as a key economic governance forum. We are purposefully consolidating an independent centre of gravity in the G20, primarily together with China, and we rally BRICS Plus countries around us. We are determined to facilitate a more active coordination of emerging economies within the G20.
Russia consistently emphasises the importance of depoliticising negotiations within the G20. We must make sure that the G20 focuses on its direct duties, specifically, global economic recovery and sustainable development. Attempts to artificially and, most importantly, selectively fill the agenda with issues of peace and security, to focus discussions on a priori confrontationist issues are counterproductive and are nothing but vestiges of the bloc mentality of the past. These actions run counter to the G20's agreed-upon socioeconomic mandate and are fraught with the risk of reducing the forum competence, due to greater disagreements between member countries and owing to the lack of progress in key spheres of its work.
We attach utmost importance to the correct interpretation of the international geopolitical situation, the Ukraine crisis and other armed conflicts, as well as the preconditions for restoring peace and stability, and the primacy of international law based on the central role of the UN. We are convinced that the G20 should make its decisions only by consensus that arises in the absence of objections from any of its members. We prioritise efforts to achieve constructive agreements within the G20 that take into account the interests of all participating countries based on the above principle and to restore an atmosphere of trust and cooperation at the forum.
We work closely with all G20 countries to debunk the Western myth about Russia's "aggressiveness" and to counter the attempts to link global humanitarian and economic issues solely to the "conflict in Ukraine," which is caused and fuelled by the Americans to the detriment of pan-European security and prospects for stable social and economic progress in Eurasia. These tactics of pitting countries and partners against each other has been repeatedly used by the Washington administration to ignite wars and conflicts, to weaken its geopolitical rivals, and to create permanent hotbeds of tension along their borders.
We are countering this destructive logic with a constructive approach. We are making a weighty contribution to shaping mutually acceptable, realistic, and sought-after outcomes of the Indian presidency. We are pushing for the proper understanding of the tasks at hand in matters of sustainable development with a focus on poverty and hunger eradication, ensuring universal access to energy, food, and healthcare. We confirm our country's willingness to further expand supplies of energy, fertiliser, and agricultural products to international markets, primarily to developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
We strive to actively use the G20 for democratising international economic and financial institutions, including the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO, diversifying mechanisms for mutual settlements, insurance, and transport services, as well as building independent cross-border supply chains. We pay primary attention to expanding the involvement of emerging markets, developing economies, and the African continent in these processes. We advocate for maintaining an open global economy and a non-discriminatory approach to all its participants, and rejecting unilateral restrictive measures. We believe that the West's reliance on illegitimate restrictions and unfair competition stems from its defeat in fair competition with new economic centres and its unwillingness to acknowledge the emergence of a multipolar international order.
We will liberally share Russia's solutions and proposals with the G20 members in areas such as improving the business environment, removing barriers to investment and flows of goods, stimulating integration processes, including the vast experience and practical tools gained by the EAEU. We will consistently explain the advantages of implementing the Greater Eurasian Partnership flagship Russian foreign policy project which was advanced by President Putin in 2015. It will make it possible to create a continuous economic loop across our entire common continent. We believe the EAEU, the SCO, ASEAN, BRICS, the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, as well as India, Iran, Türkiye, the Gulf States, and others are legitimate participants of this partnership.
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