KYIV - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday he would not participate in the upcoming  Group of 20 (G-20) leaders’ summit in Indonesia if Russian President Vladimir Putin attends it.

“If the leader of the Russian Federation was to take part in it, Ukraine would not be participating,” Mr Zelensky told a press conference with Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou in Kyiv.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Friday that Mr Putin has still not decided if he will attend the G-20 summit this month as war rages in Ukraine. 

The meeting of the world’s top economies has been overshadowed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the two sides being locked in a protracted conflict that Kyiv says has left 4.5 million Ukrainians without power during the cold of winter.

Mr Widodo said Mr Putin told him in a phone call on Wednesday his attendance at the two-day gathering on the resort island of Bali remains up in the air. 

“He (Putin) wanted to attend, but cannot decide at the moment,” Mr Widodo told local newspaper Kompas in an interview published on Friday. He had said in August that Mr Putin had accepted Jakarta’s invite to the summit on Nov 15-16, despite Western pressure to bar Moscow from the meeting and in the face of the Kremlin’s growing international isolation.

Indonesia pursues a neutral foreign policy on the Ukraine war and has also invited Mr Zelensky to the summit where he is expected to participate virtually. Ukraine is not a member of the G-20 group.

Mr Zelensky and Mr Widodo held phone talks on Thursday about preparations for the G-20 summit, the Ukrainian leader said in a tweet.

Indonesia has called for a peaceful resolution to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Mr Widodo becoming the first Asian leader to visit both Kyiv and Moscow since the outbreak of war in February.

The Indonesian President said 17 G-20 leaders have confirmed their attendance at the summit, including US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Indonesia’s foreign minister Retno Marsudi said on Thursday that differences over Ukraine had made preparations for the G-20 meeting particularly fraught. The Ukraine war has also resulted in food and energy crisis.

The world’s 20 most powerful economies disagree on how to respond to the war.

Ms Retno told Reuters in an interview that Mr Putin’s attendance at the meeting might become clear only at the last minute.

“Let’s wait until D-Day,” she said, when asked if the Russian leader’s attendance had been confirmed.

US President Joe Biden is due to attend.

When Indonesia assumed the chairmanship of the G-20 last December, the biggest concern was recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, she said, but that changed with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists. Ukraine and the West say the fascist allegation is baseless and that the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.

Ukraine called on Tuesday for Russia to be expelled from the G-20 and for Mr Putin’s invitation to the Bali summit to be revoked.

Ms Retno, asked about that request, said it was not the prerogative of the G-20 chair.

“The presidency doesn’t have the right to expel, unless it’s a consensus from G-20 member countries,” she said.

‘Very difficult’

Ms Retno said some countries had taken a “black and white” approach to very complex issues, and in some cases group members had taken days to agree on the use of a single word.

“It’s very, very, very difficult,” she said of the preparations for the summit.

“I can say that Indonesia’s presidency this time, maybe it’s among the or maybe the most difficult of all G-20‘s because of the geopolitical issues, economy, and others.”

The grouping has failed to release joint communiques at several meetings this year, including a G-20 foreign ministers’ meeting in July.

A joint communique also appears unlikely at the upcoming summit, with Indonesia instead working on a “leader’s declaration”, two diplomatic sources told Reuters.

Ms Retno declined to directly answer questions on the likelihood of a communique, saying only that she was more concerned about the substance of the final document.

“Whatever name it adopts will contain leaders’ political commitments. For us, it’s better that we focus on the content. In the end, the content speaks more,” she said.

Indonesia, which voted at the UN General Assembly in October to condemn what Russia has called its annexation of four Ukrainian territories, has maintained that the G-20 should focus on economic issues.

Ms Retno said that while discussion of the Ukraine war was inevitable, the G-20 remained “intact”.

Among this year’s successes, she said, was a fund for future pandemics that has reached US$1.4 billion (S$2 billion), with contributions from countries and groupings such as China, the United States and the European Union.  AFP, REUTERS