Russia’s Lavrov slams West’s ‘obsession’ with Ukraine war at G20 summit

Sergey Lavrov accuses US of turning G20 summit into ‘anti-Russian platform’, says European leaders are suffering from ‘bipolar disease’ in stance on Ukraine war

Bulk of G20 nations expected to condemn Russian invasion of Ukraine in joint declaration, which Lavrov says could be politicised and used to pin blame on Moscow

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Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, Indonesia on Tuesday. Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry/AFP

Published: 8:30pm, 15 Nov 2022Updated: 9:48pm, 15 Nov 2022

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday slammed the West for what he said were efforts to make the Ukraine war a key talking point of all diplomatic forums, adding that there were attempts to “politicise” a joint declaration at the G20 Summit.

“One can’t help but talk about it because the West is making it a priority by throwing this topic into any kind of discussion,” Lavrov told Russian reporters on the sidelines of the meeting in Bali.

“They were quite aggressive, accusing Russia of, as they put it, unprovoked aggression against Ukraine. But the more often they talk about the unprovoked aggression, the more, I guess, everyone gets convinced that this aggression was provoked by them,” he said, of Western nations present at the G20 talks.

“I think if the West is so obsessed with these ideals and probably they attempted to use this summit to undermine the G20, undermine the joint declaration and blame it on us, they failed in this,” he added, saying that the US had turned the annual event into an “anti-Russian platform”.

“Yes, our Western colleagues tried in every way to make that declaration politicised and tried to push through language that implied condemning the actions of the Russian Federation on behalf of the entire G20, which includes us,” Lavrov said.

Much of the large congregation of international media gathered in the Indonesian resort island, including This Week in Asia, were not invited to Lavrov’s press huddle. The 20-minute session was live-streamed by the Russian state news agency Sputnik.

Lavrov also said he held talks with Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz and France’s President Emmanuel Macron on the war, and accused Ukraine’s leaders of being wholly responsible for a lack of progress in peace efforts given their “unrealistic” conditions.