White House Considers G20 Declaration That Disappointed Ukraine "Powerful"

Saturday, 16 September 2023

The White House has defended the text of the final declaration of the G20 summit last week, which had disappointed Ukraine due to the lack of condemnation of Russian aggression.

Jake Sullivan, US Presidential National Security Advisor, said at a briefing that he has "not received any kind of formal or, really, informal reaction from Ukraine with respect to the G20 communiqué".

Sullivan said that similar proposals were made at the G20 summit as well as at the peace summits in Copenhagen and Jeddah.

He listed four key principles of the declaration regarding Ukraine: the paramount centrality of territorial integrity and sovereignty; the statement that it is totally unacceptable for any country to use force to violate the territorial integrity of another country; attacking grain infrastructure or civilian infrastructure should be totally off-limits; and the threat or use of nuclear weapons in a conflict like this should be inadmissible.

"Those four things, which all showed up in the G20 communiqué, all are powerful and, I would argue, in a way, not neutral statements in this context because those are all four things that really say to Russia, ‘What you are doing is not acceptable’," Sullivan said.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine criticised the G20 communiqué, describing the document as "nothing to be proud of" in the part about Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the G20 leaders' declaration, and US President Joe Biden explained the lack of a direct condemnation of Russian aggression against Ukraine in the document.

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