Indonesia’s president of the G20 attempts to defuse tension with Russia and Ukraine visits

The first such journey by an Asian leader will take place next week when Indonesian President and G20 Chairman Joko Widodo meets with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine to promote peace and try to solve a worldwide food crisis, according to his foreign ministry.

 

The conflict in Ukraine has overshadowed meetings of the Group of 20 major economies, which Indonesia has been hosting. Indonesia has struggled to bring its members together while defying demands from Western states to exclude Russia from a summit of world leaders scheduled for November.

 

Jokowi, as the president is called, will meet with counterparts in Kyiv and Moscow following the G7 Summit in Germany, which concludes on Tuesday, according to Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.

 

She said at a news conference that “the president is demonstrating compassion toward the humanitarian catastrophe, would strive to assist in addressing the food crisis brought on by the war, and the impact felt on all countries, especially the developing and low-income ones.”

 

And he will continue to advocate for peace.

 

In February, Russia began an invasion of neighbouring Ukraine that it referred to as a “special military operation.”

 

Supply systems have been severely disrupted by the fighting, fueling a food and energy crises that has driven up inflation in several nations, some of which have implemented export restrictions to protect domestic supplies.

 

Both Vladimir Putin of Russia and Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine have accepted Jokowi’s invitation to the G20 conference in Bali.

 

Retno did not go into detail about the issues he would bring up at the meetings in Moscow and Kyiv or the dates of those meetings. Reuters was sent to the foreign ministry by the president’s office.

 

Putin will meet Jokowi on June 30, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.

 

Before the war, Ukraine was one of Indonesia’s major wheat suppliers, providing 3 million tonnes in 2021.

 

However, Jokowi might persuade Russia to release supplies of Ukrainian wheat, according to international relations specialist Radityo Dharmaputra of Indonesia’s Airlangga University.