G20-Russia - Q&A - (12 Jul. 2022)

Q: Russia said that Western efforts to isolate it at the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Bali were futile. How do you respond to that?

A: At that meeting, Minister Catherine Colonna emphasized, in the presence of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, that it was Russia that was undermining its own legitimacy as a G20 member, and that it would continue to do so while it flagrantly violated the basic principles of the UN Charter and while the actions of its army recalled the darkest hours of its history – a time of rapes and mass executions.

In Bali, Russia received no support whatsoever for its war of aggression against Ukraine. On the contrary, the vast majority of G20 countries called on Russia to immediately end its aggression, and the majority of countries strongly condemned it. The Russian foreign minister in fact drew the necessary conclusions: he left the conference just after speaking and never came back. He did not attend the discussions on food and energy security.

Catherine Colonna stressed that it was Russia’s war on Ukraine that was aggravating the economic disruptions we are dealing with – not the sanctions, whose sole purpose is to end the Russian aggression. They do not target food or fertilizer. She reiterated that Russia, on the other hand, had no scruples about using hunger and famine as weapons to serve its interests, as its blockade in the Black Sea and its scorched earth policy illustrate. She called on all the G20 countries to join the FARM initiative to strengthen food security, and on the OPEC+ countries to take measures to bring down gas and oil prices.