Discord in air as West meets East at summit

G-20 comes as China, U.S. relations crater

NEW DELHI — Fractured Eastwest relations over Russia’s war in Ukraine and increasing concerns about China’s global aspirations are set to dominate what is expected to be a highly contentious meeting of foreign ministers from the world’s largest industrialized and developing nations this week in India.

The increasingly bitter rift between the United States and its allies on one side and Russia and China on the other appears likely to widen further as top diplomats from the Group of 20 gather in the Indian capital on Thursday. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov will all be in attendance and battling for support from non-aligned members of the group.

While they will all be in the same room together, there was no sign that Blinken, who spent two days in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan warning Central Asia about the threat Russia poses before traveling to New Delhi, would sit down with either.

The split over the war in Ukraine and its impact on global energy and food security will overshadow the proceedings, but as the conflict has dragged on over the past 12 months, the divide has grown and now threatens to become a principal irritant in U.s.-china ties that were already on the rocks for other reasons.

A Chinese peace proposal for Ukraine that has drawn praise from Russia but dismissals from the West has done nothing to improve matters as U.S. officials have repeatedly accused China in recent days of considering the provision of weapons to Russia for use in the war.

Those accusations have exacerbated the already poor state of affairs between the world’s two largest economies over Taiwan, human rights, Hong Kong and the South China

Sea that took another hit last month with the U.S. discovery and then shoot-down of a Chinese surveillance balloon in American airspace.

A hastily arranged meeting between Blinken and China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, on the margins of the Munich Security Conference two weeks ago yielded no tangible results.

Blinken on Wednesday again warned China against transferring lethal military equipment to Russia, saying there would be significant consequences for such actions.