G20 Heads of State and Government Plan for Online Summit on March 26

March 24 (EIRNS)—As of today, the Russia and Saudi Arabia have announced that there will be an online summit of the G20 heads of state and government on March 26. Saudi Arabia is currently chairing the Group of 20 nations.  While the subject is primarily the coronavirus, that category includes essentially every major issue facing the world today.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on March 23 commented on the mutual lifting of sanctions between the West and Russia in order to improve cooperation against the COVID-19 pandemic, but said lifting sanctions did not depend on Russia.  “The very idea [of lifting mutual sanctions], of course, is noteworthy. Now that we have faced such a tense moment in terms of the international economic situation, the situation related to prices of energy carriers, with such a provocative trigger in the form of coronavirus, of course, such restrictions only aggravate the situation,” he said.  “I don’t know if any preparations for such unilateral steps are made and I don’t know that this is considered appropriate either,” Peskov said, responding to a question of whether Moscow could be the first to cancel counter-sanctions, reported TASS.

He pointed out that the sanctions against Russia are from the EU and the U.S.  They were not approved by the UN Security Council and therefore are illegal from the standpoint of international law.

Earlier Russian Sen. Konstantin Kosachev, who chairs the Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee, had commented that in light of the coronavirus and related currency fluctuations, there is a need for the total lifting of any economic sanctions. On March 18, he wrote on Facebook about the need for a “global agreement on a one-time and total lifting of any economic sanctions other than those imposed by the UN Security Council.” Senator Kosachev suggested that such an agreement could be “initiated by the BRICS states, upheld by the G20 countries and then certified by the UN Security Council.”