Indonesia is chairing the Group of 20 major economies and has faced pressure from Western countries to withdraw its invitation to Vladimir Putin over his country’s invasion on Ukraine, which his government calls a special military operation.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo on 18 August said that Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin will attend the G20 summit in Bali in November 2022.
“Xi Jinping will come. President Putin has also told me he will come,” Jokowi, as he is popularly known, told the news agency Bloomberg.
Indonesia is chairing the Group of 20 major economies and has faced pressure from Western countries to withdraw its invitation to Putin over his country’s invasion on Ukraine, which his government calls a “special military operation”.
This high-level visit comes amid heightened tensions between the West and the duo of Russia and China. China and US have been engaged in conflict on a number of issues including trade, human rights and Taiwan. Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has significantly increased fissures between the US-led western bloc and Moscow.
As head of the G20 this year Jokowi, as the president is known, has taken an increasingly active role in foreign affairs.
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In late June he travelled to Kyiv and Moscow to meet with his Ukrainian and Russian counterparts, Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Vladimir Putin, as part of diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution to the war and ease the global food crisis. He was the first Asian leader to do so.
Indonesia, he said, “has been accepted as a diplomatic bridge” between the two nations.
Leaders of major countries, including US President Joe Biden, are set to meet in Indonesia’s resort island of Bali in November. Indonesia has also invited Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Jokowi was elected as President in 2014 and will finish his second and final term in 2024.
