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Russia denies FM Lavrov was hospitalised, calling it “highest level of fakes”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited and later left a Bali hospital ahead of the Group of 20 summit being held on the island, Indonesian authorities said Monday. Russia denied that he had been hospitalized.
Russia’s top diplomat arrived on the resort island the previous evening to take part in the meeting of the world’s leading economies, which begins Tuesday.
Bali Gov. I Wayan Koster said Lavrov was taken to Sanglah Hospital, the island’s biggest, “for a health checkup.”
“He left the hospital after a brief checkup and his health is in good condition,” the governor said.
Four Indonesian government and medical officials earlier told The Associated Press that Lavrov was treated at the hospital in the provincial capital, Denpasar.
All of those officials declined to be identified as they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Two of the people said Lavrov had sought treatment for a heart condition, with one later saying he’d returned to his hotel.
The hospital did not immediately comment.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova denied that Lavrov had been hospitalized, calling it “the highest level of fakes.” She did not address whether he had received medical treatment.
She posted a video of Lavrov, looking healthy in a T-shirt and shorts, in which he was asked to comment on the report.
“They’ve been writing about our president for 10 years that he’s fallen ill. It’s a game that is not new in politics,” Lavrov says in the video.
Russia’s state news agency Tass separately cited Lavrov as saying, “I’m in the hotel, reading materials for the summit tomorrow.”
Asked about Lavrov’s situation, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he “did not know about what happened to Minister Lavrov. I wish him the best possible recovery and hope that tomorrow it will be possible to meet.”
Lavrov is the highest-ranking Russian official at the G-20 meeting, which U.S. President Joe Biden, China’s Xi Jinping and other leaders are attending.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attendance at the G-20 had been uncertain until last week, when officials confirmed he would not come and that Russia would be represented by Lavrov instead.
Fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is expected to be among the issues discussed at the two-day G-20 meeting, which brings together officials from countries representing more than 80% of the world’s economic output.
Biden and Xi were meeting separately ahead of the summit in their first in-person talks since the U.S. president took office.
Biden says he and Xi have a “responsibility” to show US, China can “manage differences”
President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping opened their first in-person meeting Monday since the U.S. president took office nearly two years ago, amid increasing economic and security tensions between the two superpowers as they compete for global influence.
Xi and Biden greeted each other with a handshake at a luxury resort hotel in Indonesia, where they are attending the Group of 20 summit of large economies. As they began their conversation, Biden said he and Xi have a “responsibility” to show that their nations can “manage our differences” and identify areas of mutual cooperation. Xi added that he hoped the pair would “elevate the relationship” and that he was prepared to have a “candid and in-depth exchange of views” with Biden.
Both men entered the highly anticipated meeting with bolstered political standing at home. Democrats triumphantly held onto control of the U.S. Senate, with a chance to boost their ranks by one in a runoff election in Georgia next month, while Xi was awarded a third five-year term in October by the Communist Party’s national congress, a break with tradition.
“We have very little misunderstanding,” Biden told reporters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Sunday, where he participated in a gathering of southeast Asian nations before leaving for Indonesia. “We just got to figure out where the red lines are and ... what are the most important things to each of us going into the next two years.”
Biden added: “His circumstance has changed, to state the obvious, at home.” The president said of his own situation: “I know I’m coming in stronger.”
White House aides have repeatedly sought to play down any notion of conflict between the two nations and have emphasized that they believe the two countries can work in tandem on shared challenges such as climate change and health security.
But relations between the U.S. and China have grown more strained under successive American administrations, as economic, trade, human rights and security differences have come to the fore.
Read: Biden, Xi coming into highly anticipated meeting with bolstered political standing at home
As president, Biden has repeatedly taken China to task for human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities, crackdowns on democracy activists in Hong Kong, coercive trade practices, military provocations against self-ruled Taiwan and differences over Russia’s prosecution of its war against Ukraine. Chinese officials have largely refrained from public criticism of Russia’s war, although Beijing has avoided direct support such as supplying arms.
Taiwan has emerged as one of the most contentious issues between Washington and Beijing. Multiple times in his presidency, Biden has said the U.S. would defend the island — which China has eyed for eventual unification — in case of a Beijing-led invasion. But administration officials have stressed each time that the U.S.’s “One China” policy has not changed. That policy recognizes the government in
Beijing while allowing for informal relations and defense ties with Taipei, and its posture of “strategic ambiguity” over whether whether it would respond militarily if the were island attacked.
Tensions flared even higher when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., visited Taiwan in August, prompting China to retaliate with military drills and the firing of ballistic missiles into nearby waters.
The Biden administration also blocked exports of advanced computer chips to China last month — a national security move that bolsters U.S. competition against Beijing. Chinese officials quickly condemned the restrictions.
And though the two men have held five phone or video calls during Biden’s presidency, White House officials say those encounters are no substitute for Biden being able to meet and size up Xi in person. That task is all the more important after Xi strengthened his grip on power through the party congress, as lower-level Chinese officials have been unable or unwilling to speak for their leader.
Asked about the anticipated meeting, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said last week at a news briefing that China was looking for “win-win cooperation with the U.S.” while reiterating Beijing’s concerns about the U.S. stance on Taiwan.
Read: Biden-Xi meeting: US trying to understand where China really stands
“The U.S. needs to stop obscuring, hollowing out and distorting the One China principle, abide by the basic norms in international relations, including respecting other countries’ sovereignty, territorial integrity and noninterference in other countries’ internal affairs,” he said.
Xi has stayed close to home throughout the global COVID-19 pandemic, where he has enforced a “zero-COVID” policy that has resulted in mass lockdowns that have roiled the global supply chains.
He made his first trip outside China since start of the pandemic in September with a stop in Kazakhstan and then onto Uzbekistan to take part in the eight-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization with Putin and other leaders of the Central Asian security group.
White House officials and their Chinese counterparts have spent weeks negotiating out all of the details of the meeting, which is taking place at Xi’s hotel with translators providing simultaneous interpretation through headsets.
U.S. officials were eager to see how Xi approaches the Biden sit-down after consolidating his position as the unquestioned leader of the state, saying they would wait to assess whether that made him more or less likely to seek out areas of cooperation with the U.S.
Biden and Xi each brought small delegations into the discussion, with U.S. officials expecting that Xi would bring newly-elevated government officials to the sit-down and expressing hope that it could lead to more substantive engagements down the line.
Before meeting with Xi, Biden first held a sit-down with Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who is hosting the G-20 summit, to announce a range of new development initiatives for the archipelago nation, including investments in climate, security, and education.
Many of Biden’s conversations and engagements during his three-country tour — which took him to Egypt and Cambodia before he landed on the island of Bali on Sunday — were, by design, preparing him for his meeting with Xi and sending a signal that the U.S. would compete in areas where Xi has also worked to expand his country’s influence.
Read: Biden to meet China's Xi on Monday for Taiwan, Russia talks
In Phnom Penh, Biden sought to assert U.S. influence and commitment in a region where China has also been making inroads and where many nations feel allied with Beijing. He also sought input on what he should raise with Xi in conversations with leaders from Japan, South Korea and Australia.
The two men have a history that dates to Biden’s time as vice president, when he embarked on a get-to-know-you mission with Xi, then China’s vice president, in travels that brought Xi to Washington and Biden through travels on the Tibetan plateau. The U.S. president has emphasized that he knows Xi well and he wants to use this in-person meeting to better understand where the two men stand.
Biden was fond of tucking references to his conversations with Xi into his travels around the U.S. ahead of the midterm elections, using the Chinese leader’s preference for autocratic governance to make his own case to voters why democracy should prevail.
The president’s view was somewhat validated on the global stage, as White House aides said several world leaders approached Biden during his time in Cambodia — where he was meeting with Asian allies to reassure them of the U.S. commitment to the region in the face of China’s assertive actions — to tell him they watched the outcome of the midterm elections closely and that the results were a triumph for democracy.
U.S. officials said no joint communique was expected after the meeting with Xi and downplayed expectations for policy breakthroughs. The White House said Biden planned to hold a press after his meeting with Xi.
Indonesian officials: Russian FM Lavrov taken to hospital
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been taken to the hospital after suffering a health problem following his arrival for the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesian authorities said Monday.
Three Indonesian government and medical officials told The Associated Press that the Russian diplomat was being treated on the resort island.
All declined to be identified as they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Two of the people said Lavrov was being treated for a heart condition.
The officials said he was taken to Sanglah Hospital in the provincial capital, Denpasar. The hospital did not immediately comment.
Also read: Russian FM Lavrov’s Visit: Dhaka to focus on energy cooperation, Rohingya issue
Officials at the Russian Embassy could not immediately be reached for comment.
Lavrov is the highest-ranking Russian official attending the G-20 summit that begins Tuesday.
Immigrants who are permanent residents can now enlist in Canadian army
As it struggles with low recruitment numbers, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) recently announced that immigrants who are permanent residents will now be able to enlist.
According to the Royal United Services Institute of Nova Scotia, a non-profit organisation of retired and active duty members of the CAF, permanent residents were previously only qualified under the Skilled Military Foreign Applicant (SMFA) entry programme, which was “open for individuals... that would reduce training costs or fill a special need... such as a trained pilot or a doctor.”
The decision was made five years after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) declared that they will change their “outdated recruitment process” to allow permanent citizens who have resided in Canada for ten years or more to apply, CTV News reports.
With only roughly half the candidates it needs each month to reach its target of recruiting 5,900 new members this year, Canadian Armed Forces raised the alarm in September about a serious recruitment shortfall that was preventing it from filling thousands of open positions.
Read: 2 dead after all-night shooting rampage in Vancouver, Canada
The military has not confirmed whether the new action was taken to increase recruiting, but Christian Leuprecht, a professor at the Royal Military College of Canada, believes it makes sense.
Leuprecht told CTV News: “In the past, the CAF has had the luxury of being able to limit itself to citizens because it has had enough applicants. This is no longer the case.”
He argued that many other nations have been doing this for years, so hiring non-citizens is by no means a novel idea.
Since Canadian citizenship is relatively simple to obtain for permanent residents, it’s not clear what significant incentive it would offer in the Canadian scenario, he said. “Countries such as France use military service as either a pathway to citizenship or an accelerated pathway to citizenship.”
Read: Canada imposes new sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas sector, chemical industry
Anita Anand, Canada’s Defence Minister, stated in March that the CAF must expand to fulfil international demands brought on by the Russia-Ukraine war.
Turkey arrests 1, suspects Kurdish militants behind bombing
Police have arrested a suspect who is believed to have planted the bomb that exploded on a bustling pedestrian avenue in Istanbul, Turkey’s interior minister said Monday, adding that initial findings indicate that Kurdish militants were responsible for the deadly attack.
Six people were killed and several dozen others were wounded in Sunday’s explosion on Istiklal Avenue, a popular thoroughfare lined with shops and restaurants that leads to the iconic Taksim Square.
Read more: Bomb rocks avenue in heart of Istanbul; 6 dead, dozens hurt
“A little while ago, the person who left the bomb was detained by our Istanbul Police Department teams,” the Anadolu Agency quoted Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu as saying. He did not identify the suspect but said 21 other people were also detained for questioning.
The minister said evidence obtained pointed to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and to its Syrian extension, the PYD. He said the attack would be avenged.
“Those who made us go through this pain in Istiklal Avenue will be inflicted much more pain,” Soylu said.
Soylu also blamed the United States, saying a condolence message from the White House was akin to a “killer being first to show up at a crime scene.” Turkey accuses the U.S. of supporting Syrian Kurdish groups.
Soylu said of the 81 people who were hospitalized, 50 were discharged. Five of the wounded were receiving emergency care and two of them were in life-threatening condition, he said.
Read more: At least 100 dead as two car bombs exploded at Somalia's capital
The PKK has fought an insurgency in Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since then.
Ankara and Washington consider the PKK a terrorist group but they diverge on the issue of the Syrian Kurdish groups, which have fought against the Islamic State group in Syria.Police officers stand at the entrance the street after an explosion on Istanbul's popular pedestrian Istiklal Avenue, late Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022. A bomb rocked on a major pedestrian avenue in the heart of Istanbul on Sunday, killing six people, wounding dozens and sending people fleeing the fiery explosion. Emergency vehicles rushed to the scene on Istiklal Avenue, a popular thoroughfare lined with shops and restaurants that leads to the iconic Taksim Square.(AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)
G-20 summit casts spotlight on Bali's tourism revival
Dozens of world leaders and other dignitaries are traveling to Bali for the G-20 summit, drawing a welcome spotlight on the revival of the tropical island’s vital tourism sector.
Tourism is the main source of income on this idyllic “island of the gods” that is home to more than 4 million people, who are mainly Hindu in the mostly Muslim archipelago nation.
So the pandemic hit Bali harder than most places in Indonesia.
Read more: Ukraine war, tensions with China loom over big Bali summit
Before the pandemic, 6.2 million foreigners arrived in Bali each year. Its lively tourism scene faded after the first case of COVID-19 was found in Indonesia in March 2020, with restaurants and resorts shuttered and many workers returning to villages to try to get by.
Foreign tourist arrivals dropped to only 1 million in 2020, mostly in the first few months of the year, and then to a few dozen in 2021, according to government data. More than 92,000 people employed in tourism lost their jobs and the average occupancy rate of Bali hotels fell below 20%.
The island’s economy contracted 9.3% in 2020 from the year before and again contracted nearly 2.5% year-on-year in 2021.
“The coronavirus outbreak has hammered the local economy horribly,” said Dewa Made Indra, regional secretary of Bali province. “Bali is the region with the most severe economic contraction.”
After closing to all visitors early in the pandemic, Bali reopened to Indonesians from other parts of the country in mid-2020. That helped, but then a surge of cases in July 2021 again emptied the island’s normally bustling beaches and streets. Authorities restricted public activities, closed the airport and shuttered all shops, bars, sit-down restaurants, tourist attractions and many other places on the island.
Monkeys deprived of their preferred food source — bananas, peanuts and other goodies given to them by tourists — took to raiding villagers’ homes in their search for something tasty.
The island reopened to domestic travelers a month later, in August, but in all of 2021 only 51 foreign tourists visited.
Things are looking much better now. Shops and restaurants in places like Nusa Dua, a resort area where the G-20 meeting is being held, and in other towns like Sanur and Kuta have reopened, though business is slow and many businesses and hotels are still closed or have scaled back operations.
Read more: US supports India for G20 presidency
The reopening of Bali's airport to international flights and now the thousands coming for the G-20 summit and other related events have raised hopes for a stronger turnaround, Dewa said.
More than 1.5 million foreign tourists and 3.1 domestic travelers had visited Bali as of October this year.
Embracing a push toward more sustainable models of tourism, Bali has rolled out a digital nomad visa scheme, called the “second home visa" and due to take effect in December. It's also among 20 destinations Airbnb recently announced it was partnering with for remote work, also including places in the Caribbean and the Canary Islands.
The recovery will likely take time, even if COVID-19 is kept at bay.
Gede Wirata, who had to lay off most of the 4,000 people working in his hotels, restaurants, clubs and a cruise ship during the worst of the pandemic, found that when it came time to rehire them many had found jobs overseas or in other travel businesses.
The G-20 is a welcome boost. “This is an opportunity for us to rise again from the collapse," he said.
There's a way to go.
Read more: Putin won’t be at G20 summit, avoiding possible confrontation with US
“The situation has not yet fully recovered, but whatever the case, life has to go on,” said Wayan Willy, who runs a tourist agency in Bali with some friends. Before the pandemic, most of their clients were from overseas. Now it's mostly domestic tourists. But even those are few and far between.
Bali has suffered greatly in the past. At times, the island's majestic volcanos have rumbled to life, at times erupting or belching ash.
The dark cloud of the suicide bombings in Bali's beach town of Kuta that killed 202 mostly foreign tourists in 2002 lingered for years, devastating tourism on the island usually known for its peace and tranquility.
Recent torrential rains brought floods and landslides in some areas, adding to the burdens for communities working to rebuild their tourism businesses.
When the situation started to improve, Yuliani Djajanegara, who runs a business making traditional beauty items like massage oils, natural soaps and aromatherapy products under the brand name Bali Tangi, got back to work.
She had closed her factory in 2020 when orders from hotels, spas and salons in the U.S., Europe, Russia and the Maldives dried up, taking orders for her products from more than 1,000 kilograms (1 ton) to almost nothing.
So far, Djajanegara has rehired 15 of the 60 workers she had been obliged to lay off during the dark days of the pandemic.
She's hopeful, but cautious.
“Tourism in Bali is like a sand castle," Djajanegara said. “It is beautiful, but it can be washed away by the waves.”
Iran sentences anti-government protester to death: Report
Iran’s Revolutionary Court has sentenced an anti-government protester to death, and handed down jail terms to five others, state media said Sunday, amid persistent unrest in the country.
The ruling likely marks the first death sentence in the trials of those arrested for participating in protests that have swept Iran over the past weeks demanding an end to clerical rule.
Mizan, a news website is linked to Iran's judiciary, said the death sentence followed on charges of the protester setting fire to a government building. The five prison terms ranged from five to 10 years and alleged national security and public order violations.
Read more: Iran protests: Solidarity rallies held in US, Europe showing int'l support
Mizan said separate branches of the Revolutionary Court issued the verdicts but did not share further details of the protesters on trial, who can appeal the decisions.
The court was established following the 1979 Islamic Revolutions and is known for meting out harsh punishments to those who oppose Iran's clerical rulers.
Iran has already issue indictments for hundreds of detained protesters saying it will hold public trials for them.
Anti-government demonstrations have entered their eighth week and were sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was detained after allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.
Read more: Iran govt now targeting singers, actors, sports stars for supporting protests
Judicial authorities have announced charges against hundreds of people in other Iranian provinces. Some have been accused of “corruption on earth” and “war against God,” offenses that carry the death penalty.
Security forces, including paramilitary volunteers with the Revolutionary Guard, have violently cracked down on the demonstrations, killing over 300 people, including dozens of children, according to the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights. Iranian authorities say more than 40 security forces were also killed in the nationwide unrest.
Although the protests first focused on ending Iran’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab, they have since transformed into one of the greatest challenges to the ruling clerics since the chaotic years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Biden, Xi coming into highly anticipated meeting with bolstered political standing at home
President Joe Biden will sit down with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday for their first in-person meeting since the U.S. president took office nearly two years ago, amid increasing tensions between the two superpowers as they compete for global influence.
Both men are coming into the highly anticipated meeting — held on the margins of the Group of 20 summit of world leaders in Indonesia — with bolstered political standing at home. Democrats triumphantly held onto control of the Senate, with a chance to boost their ranks by one in a runoff election in Georgia next month, while Xi was awarded a third five-year term in October by the Community Party's national congress, a tenure that broke with tradition.
“We have very little misunderstanding,” Biden told reporters in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he participated in a gathering of southeast Asian nations before leaving for Indonesia. “We just got to figure out where the red lines are and ... what are the most important things to each of us going into the next two years.”
Read more: Biden, Xi coming into highly anticipated meeting with bolstered political standing at home
Biden added: “His circumstance has changed, to state the obvious, at home.” The president said of his own situation: “I know I’m coming in stronger.”
White House aides have repeatedly sought to play down any notion of conflict between the two nations and have emphasized that they believe the two countries can work in tandem on shared challenges such as climate change and health security.
But relations between the U.S. and China have become increasingly strained during Biden's presidency.
Before leaving Washington, Biden said he planned to raise with Xi the differences in their approach to the self-governing island of Taiwan, trade practices and China's relationship with Moscow amid its nearly nine months-old invasion of Ukraine. Chinese officials have largely refrained from public criticism of Russia's war, although Beijing has avoided direct support such as supplying arms.
Taiwan has emerged as one of the most contentious issues between Washington and Beijing. Multiple times in his presidency, Biden has said the U.S. would defend the island — which China has eyed for eventual unification — in case of a Beijing-led invasion. But administration officials have stressed each time that the U.S.'s posture of “strategic ambiguity” toward the island has not changed.
Read more: Biden-Xi meeting: US trying to understand where China really stands
Tensions flared even higher when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., visited Taiwan in August, prompting China to retaliate with military drills and the firing of ballistic missiles into nearby waters.
The Biden administration also blocked exports of advanced computer chips to China last month — a move meant to bolster U.S. competition against Beijing and one that was quickly condemned by Chinese officials.
And though the two men have held five phone or video calls during Biden's presidency, White House officials say those encounters are no substitute for Biden being able to meet and size up Xi in person. That task is all the more important after Xi strengthened his grip on power through the party congress, leaving U.S. officials seeking direct engagement with Xi as lower-level officials have been unable or unwilling to speak for the Chinese president.
Many of Biden’s conversations and engagements during his three-country tour — which took him to Egypt and Cambodia before he landed on the island of Bali on Sunday — were, by design, preparing him for his meeting with Xi and sending a signal that the U.S. would compete in areas where Xi has also worked to expand his country's influence.
In Phnom Penh, Biden sought to assert U.S. influence and commitment in a region where China has also been making inroads and where many nations feel allied with Beijing. He also sought input on what he should raise with Xi in conversations with leaders from Japan, South Korea and Australia.
Read more: Biden to meet China's Xi on Monday for Taiwan, Russia talks
The two men have a history that dates to Biden's time as vice president, when he embarked on a get-to-know-you mission with Xi, then China's vice president, in travels that brought Xi to Washington and Biden through travels on the Tibetan plateau. The U.S. president has emphasized that he knows Xi well and he wants to use this in-person meeting to better understand where the two men stand.
Biden was fond of tucking references to his conversations with Xi into his travels around the U.S. ahead of the midterm elections, using the Chinese leader's preference for autocratic governance to make his own case to voters why democracy should prevail. That view was somewhat validated on the global stage, as White House aides said several world leaders approached Biden during his time in Cambodia to tell him they watched the outcome of the midterm elections closely and that the results were a triumph for democracy.
Biden planned to deliver public remarks and take questions from reporters after his meeting with Xi.
Ukraine war, tensions with China loom over big Bali summit
A showdown between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin isn’t happening, but fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and growing tensions between China and the West will be at the fore when leaders of the world’s biggest economies gather in tropical Bali this week.
The Group of 20 members begin talks on the Indonesian resort island Tuesday under the hopeful theme of “recover together, recover stronger.” While Putin is staying away, Biden will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and get to know new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni.
The summit’s official priorities of health, sustainable energy and digital transformation are likely to be overshadowed by fears of a sputtering global economy and geopolitical tensions centered on the war in Ukraine.
The nearly 9-month-old conflict has disrupted trade in oil, natural gas and grain, and shifted much of the summit's focus to food and energy security.
The U.S. and allies in Europe and Asia, meanwhile, increasingly are squaring off against a more assertive China, leaving emerging G-20 economies like India, Brazil and host Indonesia to walk a tightrope between bigger powers.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo has tried to bridge rifts within the G-20 over the war in Ukraine. Widodo, also known as Jokowi, became the first Asian leader since the invasion to visit both Russia and Ukraine in the summer.
He invited President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, not a G-20 member, to join the summit. Zelenskyy is expected to participate online.
Read more: US supports India for G20 presidency
“One of the priorities for Jokowi is to ease the tension of war and geopolitical risk,” said Bhima Yudhistira, director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta.
Last year’s G-20 summit in Rome was the first in-person gathering of members since the pandemic, though the leaders of Russia and China didn’t attend.
This year’s event is bracketed by the United Nations climate conference in Egypt and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Cambodia, which Biden and some other G-20 leaders are attending, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Thailand right afterward.
The American president vowed to work with Southeast Asian nations on Saturday, saying “we’re going to build a better future that we all want to see” in a region where China is working to grow its influence. On Sunday, Biden huddled with the leaders of Japan and South Korea to discuss China and the threat from North Korea.
One question hanging over the Bali summit is whether Russia will agree to extend the U.N. Black Sea Grain Initiative, which is up for renewal Nov. 19.
The July deal allowed major global grain producer Ukraine to resume exports from ports that had been largely blocked for months because of the war. Russia briefly pulled out of the deal late last month only to rejoin it days later.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Saturday called for more pressure on Russia to extend the deal, saying Moscow must "stop playing hunger games with the world.”
As leaders contend with conflicts and geopolitical tensions, they face the risk that efforts to tame inflation will extinguish post-pandemic recoveries or cause debilitating financial crises.
The war’s repercussions are being felt from the remotest villages of Asia and Africa to the most modern industries. It has amplified disruptions to energy supplies, shipping and food security, pushing prices sharply higher and complicating efforts to stabilize the world economy after the upheavals of the pandemic.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is urging the G-20 to provide financial help for the developing world.
"My priority in Bali will be to speak up for countries in the Global South that have been battered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate emergency, and now face crises in food, energy and finance — exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and crushing debt,” Guterres said.
The International Monetary Fund is forecasting 2.7% global growth in 2023, while private sector economists’ estimates are as low as 1.5%, down from about 3% this year, the slowest growth since the oil crisis of the early 1980s.
China has remained somewhat insulated from soaring inflation, mainly because it is struggling to reverse an economic slump that is weighing on global growth.
Read more: Putin won’t be at G20 summit, avoiding possible confrontation with US
The Chinese economy, the world’s second largest, grew at a 3.9% pace in the latest quarter. But economists say activity is slowing under the pressure of pandemic controls, a crackdown on technology companies and a downturn in the real estate sector.
Forecasters have cut estimates of China’s annual economic growth to as low as 3%. That would be less than half of last year’s 8.1% and the second lowest in decades.
Chinese President Xi will be coming to the summit emboldened by his appointment to an unusual third term as party chairman, making him China’s strongest leader in decades. It's only his second foreign trip since early 2020, following a visit to Central Asia where he met Putin in September.
Biden and Xi will hold their first in-person meeting since Biden became president in January 2021 on the event’s sidelines Monday.
The U.S. is at odds with China over a host of issues, including human rights, technology and the future of the self-ruled island of Taiwan. The U.S. sees China as its biggest global competitor, and that rivalry is only likely to grow as Beijing seeks to expand its influence in the years to come.
The European Union is also reassessing its relationship with China as it seeks to reduce its trade dependency on the country.
Biden said he plans to talk with Xi about topics including Taiwan, trade policies and Beijing’s relationship with Russia.
“What I want to do ... is lay out what each of our red lines are,” Biden said last week.
Many developing economies are caught between fighting inflation and trying to nurse along recoveries from the pandemic. Host Indonesia’s economy grew at a 5.7% pace in the last quarter, one of the fastest among G-20 nations.
But growth among resource exporters like Indonesia is forecast to cool as falling prices for oil, coal and other commodities end windfalls from the past year’s price boom.
At a time when many countries are struggling to afford imports of oil, gas and food while also meeting debt repayments, pressure is building on those most vulnerable to climate change to double down on shifting to more sustainable energy supplies.
In Bali, the talks are also expected to focus on finding ways to hasten the transition away from coal and other fossil fuels.
The G-20 was founded in 1999 originally as a forum to address economic challenges. It includes Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union. Spain holds a permanent guest seat.
Some observers of the bloc, like Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, question whether the G-20 can even function as geopolitical rifts grow.
“I’m skeptical that it can survive long-term in its current format,” he said in a briefing last week.
That makes things especially tough on host Indonesia.
“This is not the G-20 they signed up for,” Lipsky said. “The last thing they wanted was to be in the middle of this geopolitical fight, this war in Europe, and be the crossroads of it. But that’s where they are.”
Kherson celebrates Russian exit amid no power, no water
During the long, long months when Russian forces were in charge, the national flag was contraband. Only rarely and in the privacy of his own home did Yevhen Teliezhenko dare bring out his prized possession, the banned yellow-and-blue of Ukraine.
Now the Russians are gone, forced out of his southern city of Kherson, and the 73-year-old is making up for all that lost time. He and his wife are driving around the city, flying their flag and — with the enthusiasm of teenagers — asking Ukrainian soldiers who liberated them to autograph it.
“They were fighting for us. We knew we were not alone," he said.
Where just last week there was deep fear in Kherson, now there is an abundance of joy.
Read more: Ukrainian police, broadcasts return to Kherson
And that emotion is bursting out despite the fact there is no power, no water and barely any cellphone coverage. Food and medicines are in short supply. Life promises to be tough for weeks to come, as winter bites down on barely heated residences. Russia's poisoned parting gifts were the destruction of key infrastructure and the deadly seeding of booby traps around the city.
Still, at least hope and happiness are back, which will more than do for now.
“Finally freedom!” said 61-year-old Tetiana Hitina, Teliezhenko’s wife. "The city was dead."
Kherson was the only provincial capital captured by Russia, seized in the invasion's first weeks. It was a significant — but as it turned out only temporary — prize for Moscow, because of the city's port and its strategic position on the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine.
The Dnieper's wide waters now separate Ukraine's troops, who fought their way for weeks toward Kherson, and its former Russian occupiers, who abandoned the city last week in the face of the Ukrainian advance, escaping to the river's eastern bank.
Yet the fighting is far from over.
Russian troops are now digging in there, bracing for the next Ukrainian move. Over the sounds of Ukrainians rejoicing for a third day running Sunday in Kherson's main square, the thump of artillery fire could be heard in the distance. About 70% of the wider Kherson region is still in Russian hands.
Roads leading into Kherson bear witness to the ferocity of the fighting — much of it largely unreported at the time because Ukraine had blacked out frontline news from the region to avoid giving useful intelligence to the Russians. For tens of kilometers (miles) on approach to the city, the war and its ravages have left not a building untouched.
Amid the abandoned trenches and the charred remains of military hardware, a surprising sight: children popped out of mutilated homes to wave at cars rolling through their village, which until only recently was a war zone.
Freed of their occupiers, residents of Kherson are now able to begin telling the grim stories of life under Moscow's rule. Some spoke of Russian soldiers detaining people in the streets, seemingly arbitrarily, for checks and questioning — and sometimes worse.
Read more: Russia says Kherson city withdrawal complete
Others worry about friends and acquaintances who were told to leave Kherson when Russian forces were beginning their weeks-long withdrawal. Tens of thousands of people were evacuated, ferried across the Dnieper and bused deeper into territory that Russia still holds.
In the final days before they finished their pullout last week, Russian troops grew increasingly nervous and rumors flew around the city, said Karina Zaikina, 24.
“They were stealing and morally pressuring us,” she said. “It was clear that they were scared because they all walked only in groups.”
“I woke up calm today,” she said. “For the first time in many months, I wasn’t scared to go to the city.”
In scenes reminiscent of European cities that Allied forces liberated in World War II, Kherson residents poured into the city's central square, honked car horns, danced, wept and hugged. In one place, two people who were alleged to have collaborated with the Russians were tied to poles with their hands behind their backs.
For the moment, billboards that the city's former Russian-backed administrators put up are still there. But surely, not for long.
Their now-outdated message reads: “Russia is here forever.”