JOHANNESBURG: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday will arrive in Johannesburg to take part in a two-day Group of Twenty mi...
JOHANNESBURG: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday will arrive in Johannesburg to take part in a two-day Group of Twenty ministerial meeting.
South Africa is holding presidency in the Group of Twenty this year, being the first African country to host G20 events.
Lavrov’s visit to South Africa will take place shortly after the milestone Russian-US talks in Riyadh and the G20 top diplomats are likely to want to learn about them firsthand. According to Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Lavrov plans to hold a series of bilateral meetings in Johannesburg.
Experts don’t rule out that other Western countries may follow the United States’ lead and ask for a meeting with Lavrov on the sidelines of the G20 event. The Russian side has always said that it is ready for dialogue if foreign ministers are interested in it. However, Western officials have been demonstratively avoided meeting with the top Russian diplomat during the past three years.
Scandal with the US
A difficult situation is unfolding around another participant in the Riyadh talks - US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has decided to skip the meeting in Johannesburg amid a scandal in bilateral relations between Washington and Pretoria.
On February 7, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to stop assistance to South Africa and accused that country’s leadership of discriminating the white population and plans to seize lands from farmers. He also lambasted the South African side for filing a lawsuit against Israel with the UN International Court of Justice in December 2023, accusing the Israeli side of staging genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Rubio said he would not take part in the G20 meeting due to South Africa’s anti-American policy. He also criticized the meeting’s agenda. Pretoria officially invited Washington to discuss the situation and requested explanations from it, but no response has followed as of yet.
The meeting’s agenda
Speaking to Russian lawmakers, Lavrov noted that the G20 should be used to "teach Western counterparts to work in a mutually respectful manner, rather than impose their unilateral approaches and prescriptions." He noted that Russia and its BRICS partners, as well as other countries of the global South are managing to contain the West’s attempts within the G20 "to Ukrainize the agenda, impose discriminatory economic, financial, trade, and climate solutions."
South Africa, as the host country, plans to offer a really unifying agenda for discussions. Thus, according to Zakharova, South Africa’s priorities are called to promote economic growth, reduce inequality and disbalances, ensure fair access to financing for countries of the global South.
Special attention is expected to be focused on the international situation, which "is degrading because of the confrontational policy of the neoliberal Western elites."
Lavrov’s speech
The top Russian diplomat will address his G20 counterpart with a detailed analysis of the international situation, with a focus on the root causes of the critical conflicts and will outline concrete steps to overcome them.
"It is also planned to once again call for ensuring the openness of the global economy, rejecting trade wars, illegitimate, criminal sanctions and other manifestations of unfair competition," Zakharova noted. "The Russian side will reiterate its course toward ensuring the United Nations’ central role in global affairs and, naturally, will once again stress the need for observing the United Nations Charter."
Apart from that, in her words, Lavrov will also speak about those associations "that develop fair, productive relations without dictation and blackmail, such as the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and BRICS." "And, naturally, special attention will be paid to Russia’s initiative of greater Eurasian partnership," she added.
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