Ajit Karn
New Delhi: In a statement released Friday after a meeting in New Delhi, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his counterparts from India, Japan, and Australia said that Russia can’t go to war without being punished.
The Quad group also said that it was “unacceptable” for nuclear weapons to be used or threatened to be used in Ukraine. At the end of last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled out of an important treaty to limit nuclear weapons and threatened to start nuclear tests again.
“If we let Russia do what it’s doing in Ukraine without punishment, it sends a message to would-be aggressors everywhere that they might be able to do the same,” Blinken said in New Delhi.
Blinken met with his counterparts from the Quad group at a G20 meeting in New Delhi. At the meeting, ministers had been trading blame for the conflict.
Blinken met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for the first time since the conflict began just over a year ago. The meeting took place the day before in the capital. A senior U.S. official said that during the short meeting, Blinken asked Moscow to end the war and stop putting the New START nuclear treaty on hold.
Russian news agencies said that the Russian foreign ministry said Lavrov and Blinken spoke for less than 10 minutes and did not negotiate.
At the G20, the United States and its allies asked member countries to keep putting pressure on Russia to end the conflict. However, Russia and China did not agree to a joint statement about the war, so the G20 could not agree on a statement.
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In their statement, the Quad ministers also took a clear shot at China by criticising actions that increase tensions in the South China Sea and the “militarization” of disputed territories in the area.
China has said that the Quad is a holdover from the Cold War and a group of people who are “out to get other countries.”
