G20 Summit News: Is India devaluing Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin’s absence from meet?

Source: Mint | Original Published At: 2023-09-06 09:54:36 UTC

Key Points

• Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin skipping the G20 Summit in Delhi marks a significant diplomatic absence.
• India faces geopolitical challenges balancing relations with China and Russia amid border disputes and Ukraine war dynamics.
• Modi's diplomatic efforts to showcase India's global influence are complicated by geopolitical polarization.
• India's neutral stance on Russia-Ukraine conflict and its strategic alignment with the US are highlighted.
• Negotiating a unified G20 communique remains challenging due to east-west and north-south divides.

China’s President Xi Jinping is set to skip the G20 meet for the first time since assuming power in 2012. Beijing had informed that Premier Li Qiang will be representing China during the G20 meet set to be held between 9-10 September in national capital Delhi. Further, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has also decided to skip the G20 Summit meet in Delhi.

The G20 Summit meet is a gathering of world‘s biggest economies, and this being skipped by powerful economy like China, and a country’s premiere engulfed in war with Ukraine is likely to be seen as a setback for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The G20 Summit meet is PM Narendra Modi’s tool to showcase India’s projected geopolitical clout at a time when he has emphasised on ‘India being the growing economy’ an using the same ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections.

India’s Union Minister for External Affairs S Jaishankar had, in an interview with news agency ANI, said absence of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of Twenty summit would not detract from its importance.

“There have been presidents to prime ministers, who for whatever reason, have chosen not to come themselves. That country and that country’s position is obviously reflected by whoever is the representative on that occasion.” he had said in the interview with ANI.

China’s XI Jinping skipping the meet of G20 Summit, despite having several talks with PM Modi on side-lines of international summit, which includes the recently concluded BRICS summit, and the G-20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia last year, could potentially aggravate tensions with India as the two nuclear-armed neighbours are locked in a border dispute.

The Kremlin earlier said Putin is too “busy” to attend the G-20 summit and his main focus for now is overseeing Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has gone on for more than a year. Putin had in a phone call with PM Modi said Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is attending the G20 Summit meeting instead.

Russia and Vladimir Putin, since they unleashed a ‘special military operation’ on Ukraine, that quickly became a full-fledged war for over a year now, has also earned the wrath of western nations which manifested in several hard hitting sanctions and counter sanctions on both ends.

In this scenario, India has refused to take sides for either the West or Russia, earning the dismay of the West. It maintained close ties with the US but abstained from votes at the United Nations to condemn the war and avoided joining US-led sanctions against Russia, which remains a major supplier of weapons and cheap energy.

Meanwhile, India has also positioned itself as a bulwark against China’s rising geopolitical and economic dominance and sought to get more military technology transfers from the US and its allies.

As per Bloomberg report, the language over Russia’s war in Ukraine will again be a hot topic at the G-20 summit. PM Modi and his diplomats will have to exercise caution for them to broker a compromise similar to the one forged by Indonesia last November, particularly as tensions remain high between India and China — one of Russia’s biggest diplomatic backers.

Jaishankar said G-20 diplomats are negotiating on the final communique.

“The clock didn’t start ticking yesterday, the clock has been ticking for sometime,” he said. “We have the responsibility today in a very difficult world. But it’s also difficult politically. There’s a very sharp north-south divide, there’s even sharper east-west polarization.”

(With inputs from Bloomberg)