美财长与俄财长在G20会晤，莫迪公开呼吁普京结束战争

European officials, including Germany's finance minister, were angered at the presence of Russia's finance minister at the G20 meeting in North Carolina. Russia confirmed that Anton Nelson and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson met on the sidelines of the gathering only. It's hard to overstate just how rare this high level contact is between the U.S. and Russian economic teams. Just tell us what the diplomatic implications are.

Absolutely, Lizzie. I mean, this is the first time you've had the participation of the Russian finance minister in the G20 meeting as a sort of normal guest, which is, of course, to have drawn a lot of criticism from the other European counterparts who are attending there since the full scale invasion of Ukraine back in 2022. And it's, you know, very rare to see, you know, has the highest Russian officials standing alongside the highest American officials on American soil, which is exactly what you got yesterday with Anton sitting, one of which was, of course, presided over the Russian economy, yes, over the wartime economy, but also insulating the Russian economy from a number of different sanctions regimes, including those that have been deployed by the U.S. administration and continued by Treasury Secretary Scott Besson.

Now, we don't know a great deal about what the two discussed. There's been some reporting around the idea that Scott Besson told salon that there would actually not be any sort of sanctions relief until the war was drawing to a close. As you mentioned, there was a number of criticisms from the European counterparts, including the German finance minister, who says that this basically sends a message of normalization with the Russians, when in point of fact, there is not a normal situation with the Russians.

But stepping back and looking kind of at the broader context here, we've been talking a lot lately about the different dynamic we've seen on the battlefield in Ukraine, with the Ukrainians gaining momentum. We've talked about the huge amount of strikes who have been within Russian territory. The effect that that has had on the economy. And of course, Anton, still one of the finance ministers, also had to deal with this massive austerity drive that we've been reporting on early in this year when the Russians were effectively running out of money for the Americans.

Does that provide this opportunity, these sorts of conditions for a kind of diplomatic breakthrough with the Russians? That seems to be the indication from the U.S. administration, not just the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson. But last week we also had the CIA director in Moscow who reportedly, according to Axios, suggested yet again a possible meeting between Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky. So I think the message here from the American side at least, is that diplomacy is firmly back on the table.

And it's not just American pressure. You've had India's Prime Minister Narendra modi calling on President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. I just want to play you a bit of that. How does Shamsi get some help? India supports all efforts towards peace and will continue to support these efforts. We need to move from an endless war to an end of war, which also is important for the benefit of humanity as soon as possible.

All issues are resolved peacefully. We'll see. The Shah met. Again. This is a very notably public move by Modi. How significant is it? Yeah. Notably public. And of course he also switched to English in particular part of the sentence so obviously intended not just for a local audience. This is a sort of public message in English delivered by the Prime Minister of India. And we should say for context here, India has been a large supporter of Russia.

They have not really come out and been critical of the war in Ukraine. They have, of course, one of the largest customers for fossil fuels and crude oil, which has been able to keep the Russian coffers full of money in order for them to continue the war. And so you have him coming out, sitting there alongside Vladimir Putin, I have to say, did not look particularly comfortable, but again, still in a sort of fairly benign way, criticizing it, but doing it in a very sort of public matter.

So I do think that, again, when we try to consider the possible end game over the next few months, you're under and looking for a sort of off ramp in the war in Ukraine to get this from the Prime Minister of India, to come out and say that quite publicly, I think is, again, potentially a significant development. Now, thinking about the broader context here, it's interesting to have the highest, uh, sort of Russian finance official at the G20 meeting while you have Putin there at the SCO, which is effectively the rival organization to the G7, an American led sort of Western hegemony on the international stage.

So a lot to unpack, Lizzie. But again, these are sort of two significant developments in two very different parts of the world.