Russian President Vladimir Putin will attend the Group of 20 event in November, according to Indonesia’s president, as White House officials publicly expressed reservations about the matter.
“Last night at 7, I spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Indonesian President Joko Widodo said in a statement Friday. “President Putin expressed his gratitude for the invitation to the G20 summit and he said he would attend.”
The Russian government has not publicly responded to Widodo’s statement. Russia is a member of the G20, which unites the world’s top economies.
“I have invited [Ukraine] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to attend the G20 summit,” the Indonesian president also said in a statement. Widodo said that he spoke to both Zelenskyy and Putin this week in separate phone calls, saying that he told the Russian president to immediately end its 2-month-long invasion of Ukraine.
Earlier this week, Zelenskyy said in a statement posted to Twitter that he “thanked Indonesian leader Joko Widodo for the invitation to attend the G20 summit” during their call. It’s not clear whether Zelenskyy will accept the invitation. Ukraine is also not a member of the G20.
Previously, President Joe Biden said Russia should be removed from the G20, while senior White House officials have walked out of G20 events where Russian delegates were present. On Thursday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded to reports Putin may attend the summit and expressed misgivings.
“The president has been clear about his view: This shouldn’t be business as usual, and that Russia should not be a part of this,” Psaki told reporters Thursday. “But, again, it’s six months away.”
G20 members include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United States, and the European Union. Spain is currently invited as a permanent guest.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Ukrainian officials said that its forces have been taking significant losses in recent days. But they stressed that Russia’s military is losing even more troops and armored units.
Ukraine has acknowledged losing control of some towns and villages there since the assault began last week, but says Moscow’s gains have come at a massive cost to a Russian force already worn down from its earlier defeat near the capital.
“We have serious losses but the Russians’ losses are much much bigger ... They have colossal losses,” presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said, without elaborating. Western officials said Russia had been suffering fewer casualties after narrowing the scale of its invasion but numbers were still “quite high.”
