- Thursday, May 09, 2024
India on November 22 held a virtual meeting of the G20 summit, two months after the physical summit in New Delhi, to discuss the implementation of the leaders’ declaration made in the September summit.
By: Shubham Ghosh
RUSSIA, one of India’s time-tested allies, has lauded the latter’s presidency of the G20 groupings in 2022-23 and said the bloc’s summit resulted in “extremely productive” and “good results” under New Delhi’s chairmanship.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson of the Kremlin, said this on Friday (24).
India on Wednesday (22) held a virtual meeting of the G20 summit, two months after the physical summit in New Delhi, to discuss the implementation of the leaders’ declaration made in the September summit and to share views and enhance cooperation on critical challenges.
In his opening remarks, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who chaired a virtual meeting, recalled that while assuming the G20 presidency from Indonesian president Joko Widodo last year, he had said India would make the G20 inclusive, ambitious, action-oriented and decisive.
“In one year, we have together achieved this” and “together we have taken G-20 to new heights,” Modi said.
Peskov said that India’s concluding chairmanship [of the G20] has “yet again demonstrated the chairman’s extremely productive work and good results from the point of view that these kinds of events are being held in a very timely fashion.”
Peskov replied in the negative to a question whether US president Joe Biden’s absence impacted the virtual summit’s atmosphere and final outcomes, Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency reported.
“Indeed, the positions on the Ukrainian issue differ, various countries used different phrasing and, in response to those, among other things, [Russian] president [Vladimir Putin] once again provided his detailed assessment of the situation,” the spokesperson said.
“The president was heard, the president heard out the others. This is important. This is a rather significant outcome in itself,” Peskov added.
In his address at the virtual summit, Putin thanked India for its good work during its chairmanship.
According to him, a lot was done in order to focus the activity of G20 countries on seeking solutions for the most pressing issues of the international socio-economic agenda which was the initial reason for the very existence of the group. The Russian president asserted that precisely this team-first approach is now as important as ever, the TASS reported.
Putin was absent during the September summit along with Chinese president Xi Jinping and while speculation was rife that the summit could fail due to the hardline stance taken by both the West and Russia and China on issues such as the Ukraine war, India managed to get all on the same page and the summit succeeded in reaching a declaration.
(With PTI inputs)
