U.S. and Russia Clash at G-20 Meeting

Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, where we’re looking at the G-20 meeting in India, Greece’s train crash, and warnings of Chinese disinformation.

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Divisions Over Ukraine at G-20

Welcome to today’s Morning Brief, where we’re looking at the G-20 meeting in India, Greece’s train crash, and warnings of Chinese disinformation.

If you would like to receive Morning Brief in your inbox every weekday, please sign up here.

Foreign ministers from G-20 countries are gathering this week in India, where Russia’s war in Ukraine is dividing the group. 

It follows the G-20 finance ministers’ meeting, where disagreements over condemnation of Russia’s invasion meant the ministers failed to issue a joint statement and instead put out a summary document. 

Representatives of 40 countries—from the G-20 and 20 non-G-20 member countries invited by India—were expected to attend. That did not include Japan’s foreign minister, Yoshimasa Hayashi, who did not attend; Japan was represented by State Minister for Foreign Affairs Kenji Yamada. However, Hayashi is expected in India later in the week, on Friday, for a meeting of representatives of the Quad countries (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States).

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had no plans to meet individually with his Chinese or Russian counterparts, Wang Yi and Sergei Lavrov. 

“If Russia…were genuinely prepared to engage in meaningful diplomacy necessary to end the aggression, of course we’d be the first to work to engage, but there’s zero evidence of that,” he told reporters on arriving in New Delhi. 

Russia was previously also part of the G-8, but the group returned to being the G-7 after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. 

China’s spending on pro-Russia disinformation. James Rubin, coordinator for the U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center, said that China spends billions globally to spread disinformation, including pro-Russian disinformation, and that the United States has been slow to respond. “We as a nation and the west have been slow to respond and it is a fair judgment that we are facing a very, very large challenge,” he told reporters while on a European tour. “In the communication space, the alignment between China and Russia is near complete.” Rubin also said cuts to the BBC’s World Service were unhelpful in the fight against disinformation.

Dozens killed in Greek train crash. At least 43 people are dead as the result of a collision between a passenger train and a freight train in Greece. The first four passenger train carriages were derailed, and the first two caught fire and were reportedly almost totally destroyed. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said it was due to “tragic human error.”

The country’s transport minister has resigned, and the local stationmaster was charged with manslaughter. The stationmaster denied having done anything wrong and suggested possible technical errors were to blame. Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis said, “When something so tragic happens, it is impossible to continue and pretend it didn’t happen.” The prime minister vowed that the state would side with the people. It is as yet unclear why the two trains were running on the same track. It was one of the worst-ever train disasters in Greek history.