Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling into Russia’s sphere of influence next week as he tries to pull some of Moscow’s traditional partners closer to the US position on the war in Ukraine.
(Bloomberg) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling into Russia’s sphere of influence next week as he tries to pull some of Moscow’s traditional partners closer to the US position on the war in Ukraine.
The top US diplomat will visit the former Soviet states of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for meetings and a regional summit of the five Central Asian states, and then travel on to the Group of 20 foreign ministers meeting in India.
The US is looking to rally global support for Ukraine as well as for increased sanctions aimed at Russia a year after President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. But in a sign of Moscow’s still-resilient ties, all three nations Blinken is set to visit abstained from a United Nations vote Thursday calling for Russia to withdraw its troops.
Those tensions were on display when global finance ministers gathered in India this week, with China and Russia declining to send top officials and Indonesia’s finance minister calling Russia’s war the “very big elephant in the room.”
US officials said Friday that Blinken will use his meetings and the G-20 summit to highlight the pressure the region has come under from rising food and energy prices as a result of Moscow’s war in Ukraine, while also leaning on India — which has historic ties with Russia — to push for an end to a conflict that shows no sign of ending anytime soon.
“It’s clear to us that the countries of Central Asia and India have had long, complex relations with Russia,” said Donald Lu, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, on a pre-trip call with reporters. “I don’t think they’re gonna end those relations anytime soon, but we are talking to them about the role they can play.”
He added that the US wants India to leverage its close ties with Russia. “It is our hope that India will use that influence with Russia to support an end to this conflict.”
Blinken also will use the G-20 session in Delhi to gather together foreign ministers of the so-called Quad that includes the US, India, Japan and Australia.
In response to a question about India’s long-running reliance on Soviet and Russian weapons systems, Lu said that Russia was having difficulty fulfilling its military contracts around the world.
Although the Biden administration remains careful not to alienate the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, some analysts say the US should lean harder on India to stop buying Russian oil and join in pressuring Putin to end the war.
“On the one hand, the administration is thinking about the long term, which is the right thing — they recognize how important India is to the US Indo-Pacific strategy,” said Lisa Curtis, a former White House National Security Council senior director for South Asia who’s now at the Center for a New American Security. “However, I think they have bent too far backward to accommodate India. I think they’ve turned too much of a blind eye.”
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