Russia and China bombard G20 summit with Western “blackmail, threats” as sparring plagues

Russia and China have slammed the West for "blackmail and threats" against other countries after the G20 summit, which was marred by disputes over the Ukraine war. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met on the sidelines of the New Delhi summit on Thursday his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang, Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement.
"Attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, to implement unilateral approaches through blackmail and threats, and to oppose the democratization of international relations were unanimously rejected," the statement said. According to the ministry, Lavrov and Qin also discussed Russia's year-long military deployment in Ukraine. China last week presented a 12-point document for peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow to end the war. The Russian statement pointed to a "high degree of closeness" between Moscow and Beijing. At the summit, the US and its European allies clashed with Russia over the war in Ukraine, with the rival sides accusing each other of destabilizing the world The Americans and Europeans urged the Group of 20 (G20) countries to keep up the pressure on Moscow to end the conflict, now in its second year. Russia hit back, accusing the West of turning work on the G20 agenda into a "farce" and said Western delegations want to shift the blame for their economic failures onto Moscow. Thursday's G20 meeting ended without a joint statement -- the bloc's second such meeting in as many weeks no agreement was reached. Lavrov said Western officials derailed the meeting to blame Russia for their own mistakes Discussions on the joint statement stalled on several issues, including Russia's insistence on an investigation into the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage last year , the foreign minister told reporters. “The statement has been blocked and the outcome of the discussion will be described in the summary, which the Indian presidency will speak about,” Lavrov said the blasts had been about "premeditated sabotage" but no party was blamed. But Moscow has been blaming the West ever since the blasts. In February, the issue surfaced again when American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in a lengthy report published on his blog, claimed the bombing of the Nord Stream underwater gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea was ordered directly by US President Joe Biden and carried out by the CIA with the help of the US Navy. The differences frustrated India, which said it wanted to use its year as host to focus on issues such as poverty reduction and climate finance "On this issue, which was quite openly about the Ukraine conflict, there were disagreements, there were differences that we couldn't resolve between different parties," Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told reporters. Earlier in the day, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that global governance has "failed" and urged participants to cheer e of the developing countries not represented there.