BANGKOK: Many delegates to the International Monetary Fund’s steering committee walked out of a meeting on Saturday when Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov addressed the group in Russian, three sources familiar with the matter said.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has roiled the International Monetary and Financial Committee, preventing it from reaching consensus statements in the years since. There were deep divisions again at this week’s annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Bangkok, as new tensions flared between the US and Ukraine.
“Many delegations walked out, including members of the European Union,” one of the sources told Reuters.
A second official in the room said nearly a dozen delegates left the room when the Russian official began speaking. Delegates from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were among those who left, the official said. “The Ukraine war is existential for us in Europe,” one European diplomat said. “We cannot normalize relations with Russia.”
Germany on Thursday warned against efforts to bring Russia back on to the international stage after Siluanov attended a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bankers, just over a month after the US had hosted his first in-person G20 appearance since Russia invaded Ukraine, at a meeting in Asheville, North Carolina.
US Treasury Undersecretary Erin Browne told Reuters the same day that Washington, the current leader of the G20 nations, supported Russia’s presence despite European concerns. “We think it’s really important if you’re going to solve a crisis, you need to have open dialogue and open conversation,” she told Reuters. “And you can’t have ... dialogue, and you can’t have resolution to conflict if no one’s talking to one another.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking at a European Union summit on Friday, blasted US President Donald Trump’s diesel deal with Russia and welcomed the prospect of European allies stepping up their role in peace talks. EU leaders rallied around Zelensky after Trump again criticized Ukraine, calling its strikes on Russian refineries a “disgrace.”
The EU was hosting Zelensky at one of the most difficult moments for Ukraine, with missiles and drones raining down on Ukrainian cities and fears that the US could pull back intelligence sharing and weapons support from Kyiv.