While US President Joe Biden has not completely ruled out the prospect of a meeting with his Russian counterpart on the sidelines of the upcoming G20 summit, a media report indicates that Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky are likely to attend the summit to be held in Indonesia.
In an interview with The National, Indonesia’s ambassador to the UAE Husin Bagis said “both have agreed (to attend)”.
The G20 summit is scheduled to take place on November 15-16 in Indonesia’s Bali.
“The situation isn’t easy because of the Ukraine-Russia war… We are deciding which hotels to put them up in ― one for Mr Putin and one for Mr Zelensky,” Bagis said, referring to the need to avoid tension by putting them too close together.
“Everything is peaceful in my country,” the envoy said in the interview.
On Thursday, when asked by reporters if he would meet Putin at the upcoming G20 or APEC summit to discuss Ukraine, Biden said, “That remains to be seen.” The US president also said Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons is the biggest such threat since the Cuban Missile Crisis, as Russia’s military leadership faced a rare domestic public backlash over the war in Ukraine.
If Putin and Zelensky travel to Bali, it will be the first time the two leaders would share a platform since the war between Russia and Ukraine began in February.
However, neither the Ukrainian nor the Russian governments reacted to Bagis’s statement.
Meanwhile, Zelensky on Friday called on Brussels to ramp up pressure on Russia’s energy sector, a day after the EU imposed a fresh round of sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
“We must continue moving in this direction — the direction of pressure on the Russian energy sector, on this main source of income of the aggressor state,” Zelensky said in a video address to an EU summit in Prague.
Zelensky also reiterated Kyiv’s calls to “demilitarise” Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – Europe’s largest nuclear facility – that is located in territory Moscow claimed to have annexed.
Putin ordered his government this week to take over operations of the plant in southern Ukraine.
(With inputs from agencies)
