While G20 foreign ministers were meeting in Bali, Indonesia, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, threatened further escalation in his war against Ukraine, announcing to the world that “by and large, we have not started anything in earnest yet”. What he meant became quickly clear when a missile attack hit an apartment building in Chasiv Yar in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, killing 33 people. Further indiscriminate attacks followed against Kharkiv in northern Ukraine and Mykolaiv in the south.
Against this background, the G20 summit on July 7 and 8 was the first time the foreign ministers of Russia, China and leading western democracies have come face-to-face with each other since the invasion of Ukraine in February.
The gathering followed a round of high-level meetings between western leaders in the wake of the invasion. These included the G7 and Nato summits in Germany and Spain at the end of June, the virtual meeting of the BRICS leaders, and the Quad’s face-to-face conference a month earlier.
