Putin did India a favour by skipping G20 Summit

Vladimir Putin’s absence was more than made up for by Russia’s formidable foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

It was conceived as a grand Summit to celebrate 10 years of the China-inspired Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), with representatives from 130 countries in attendance. But the photo that was carried in newspapers worldwide from this Summit was that of Russia’s so-called “nuclear briefcase” which can be used in a flash to trigger an atomic strike on a Russian enemy, if needed.

The craze to click and publish images of ‘Cheget’, the deadly briefcase, is because it is comparable in Hindu mythology to Lord Shiva’s ‘Third Eye’, which has power beyond description. According to legend, by opening the Third Eye, Shiva burned Kama, the God of Lust, to ashes. Cheget got its name from a mountain in the Russian Caucasus. The briefcase has rarely been filmed. But at the BRI Summit, Russian president Vladimir Putin chose to flaunt it wherever he went in Beijing. The message Putin intended to convey was probably that he would not hesitate to use it anywhere, anytime, if Russia was trifled with, beyond the limits of its endurance. In photographs circulated worldwide from Beijing, two Russian naval officers are carrying two briefcases and walking a few steps behind their president. Probably one of the two briefcases is a decoy: only Putin knows which one of them can be used for a nuclear strike against an enemy target. Russian state media confirmed that Putin did, indeed, carry the Cheget with him to Beijing.

Putin in Beijing, Johannesburg 

But apart from the nuclear briefcase, much of the attention at the Beijing Summit was on Putin’s meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping. Putin stood next to Xi when the summit’s group photo was clicked. He was second in line to address the conclave after Xi gave his opening speech. Some European delegates, led by former French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, walked out as the Russian president began speaking. In any case, only one European Union head of government was in Beijing, Hungary’s Viktor Orban.

Now consider this. If Putin had travelled to New Delhi for the Group of Twenty Summit last month, the fate of G20 would have been similar. Every international wire service story and most global television clips out of the Bharat Mandapam Summit venue would have been about Putin’s presence. They would have focused on United States president Joe Biden’s frown upon setting eyes on the ‘invader of Ukraine’, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese walking out as Putin was addressing G20 and so on. The atmosphere would have been so vitiated that there would probably have been no consensus document at the end of the leaders’ gathering. Putin, an old and trusted friend of this country, did India a favour by skipping the G20 Summit in New Delhi. But nobody in either government will say it out loud.

Putin also did an equal favour to BRICS, the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa group, by not going to Johannesburg for the bloc’s 15th Summit from August 22 to 24. In Johannesburg, there was the additional complication of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against Putin for alleged deportation of children from Ukraine during the ongoing war and other charges. Like the US, and 70 other United Nations members, India is not a signatory to the ICC’s founding Rome Statute, so there was no question of Putin’s detention in New Delhi. But South Africa needs to be in the ICC since there is still so much criminal baggage in that country over its shameful apartheid history during White rule. If Putin had attended the BRICS Summit, South Africa would have either been forced to withdraw from the ICC before the Russian president’s visit or go against the court’s mandate, which would have been a double standard. Putin’s absence was more than made up for by Russia’s formidable foreign minister Sergei Lavrov who helped midwife the emergence of BRICS as a new pole in global diplomacy at its 15th Summit. Lavrov performed a similar role during G20’s 18th Summit in New Delhi.

Fresh Commitments to BRI 

The populist trend in India to compare everything it does with China’s record must be resisted. It would be a mistake for pundits to gloat over the smaller presence this week at the BRI Summit of only 23 heads of state or government compared to 37 at a similar summit four years ago. At the government level in New Delhi, attention will be on Afghanistan’s desire to not only join the BRI, but also the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which violates Indian sovereignty over parts of Kashmir that are under illegal Pakistani occupation. Shortly before Afghanistan’s acting commerce minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi arrived for the BRI meeting, China appointed a new ambassador to Kabul. No other country has formally recognised the Taliban administration in Kabul. Afghanistan is resource-rich, notably in critical minerals, but it is short on stability and security. Equally, the Narendra Modi government will have to step up economic support for Sri Lanka, which is recovering from fiscal mismanagement under its previous president. After skipping the 2019 BRI meeting, Sri Lanka’s president Ranil Wickremesinghe was in Beijing this week. So was Joko Widodo, Indonesia’s president, who was absent previously.

Many Indian thought-leaders and almost everyone in the West have been predicting the demise of BRI after some of the initiative’s projects ran into trouble and countries like Italy became disillusioned by it. However, this week saw a reassertion of Xi’s pet project. China’s president announced nearly $111 billion in new financing from three windows, which is no small amount at a time of headwinds for the global economy. The competition for India vis-a-vis the BRI will, therefore, be for the hearts and minds in the Global South, which India is also wooing with vigour.

KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.