“Russia’s presence at this meeting was like inviting an arsonist to a meeting of firefighters”
Canada warned a Russian delegation participating in a meeting of Group of 20 finance chiefs this week that it views President Vladimir Putin’s economic advisers as personally responsible for aiding war crimes, Bloomberg reports.
“Russia’s economic technocrats, who work to fund Putin’s war machine, are personally complicit in Russia’s war crimes, just as Putin’s generals are,” Deputy Prime Minister of Canada Chrystia Freeland said she told the group.
Freeland, who has Ukrainian heritage and has long been an outspoken critic of Putin, slammed Russia’s participation at the meetings in Bali, Indonesia, earlier this week.
“Russia’s presence at this meeting was like inviting an arsonist to a meeting of firefighters,” she told reporters en route back to Canada on Saturday [July 16, 2022]. “That’s because Russia is directly and solely responsible for the illegal invasion of Ukraine and its economic consequences, which are being felt by us all.”
