It was time to give emerging economies a bigger role in instructions like the IMF and the World Bank time to give the rest a chance time to embrace the multipolar dream. Inflation, energy and food insecurity were nothing to do with him or his war in Ukraine, he maintained, rather economic mismanagement by the world's leading economies.
He pitched himself as the champion of emerging economies, struggling to make their way against the 'ill-conceived economic policies of some states' (he never likes to name his enemies). To listen to his version of events, a non-attentive bystander might just be forgiven for missing that this was a man who had started the deadliest land war in Europe since the Second World War and, despite all the proclamations of his willingness to talk peace, has no apparent intention of stopping.īut this was a speech for the global south, not for his Western critics. In his address to G20 leaders, Vladimir Putin sought to relativise his war in Ukraine, calling it a tragedy but pointing to the bloody events on the Maidan in 2014, the subsequent war in Donbas (which he blames on Kyiv), and the loss of innocent life in Gaza as being equally shocking.Ī jarring juxtaposition of horrors, as if to suggest that wars are tragic and they happen but let's set aside our differences in spite of all that nastiness and try and solve global inequities together.
