For him, there is no doubt. The missile strike in Poland “is nothing more than a message from Russia addressed to the G20 summit”, declared Volodymyr Zelensky by videoconference before the leaders of the group gathered in Bali. The offensive tone of the Ukrainian president contrasts with the calls for calm and caution from Western leaders, while the origin of the missile remains unknown.
The Ukrainian leader, who was wearing his usual khaki t-shirt, addressed the “G19”, that is to say the leaders of the major economies excluding Russia, which kyiv claims to be excluded from the group . There is “a terrorist state among you, against which we must defend ourselves”, he warned, pointing to Russia, whose Finance Minister, Anton Siluanov, was present in the room.
Sergey Lavrov already gone
The head of the Kremlin Vladimir Putin is the big absentee from the summit. He was replaced by his Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, for the opening of the summit, but the latter left Bali on Tuesday evening at the end of the first day. The Ukrainian president, whose country is not a member of the G20, had been invited by the host country, Indonesia, for the sake of neutrality, after Jakarta came under strong pressure from the West to exclude Russia.
At the first session of the summit on Tuesday, Volodymyr Zelensky said “it is time” to end Russia’s “destructive” war and proposed a full prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine. He had called for an “infinite” extension of the agreement to export Ukrainian grain, which expires on Friday. “It’s the same with the crazy threats of recourse to nuclear weapons expressed by Russian officials. There can be no excuse for nuclear blackmail,” he said.