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      Biden says ‘brinkmanship has to end’ after US shutdown avoided but Ukraine aid left out – video

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      US president Joe Biden said that aid to Ukraine must keep flowing after a deal to avert a government shutdown dropped assistance for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion. The president lambasted Republicans for holding up government spending talks and assured Ukraine that US support and aid were unwavering. ‘We cannot under any circumstances allow American for Ukraine to be interrupted,’ Biden said More

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      In Poland, Supporters of Opposition March in Warsaw Ahead of Key Election

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      The fate of democracy and aid for Ukraine undergird the October vote, which will decide whether the governing Law and Justice party secures an unprecedented third term in a row.Huge crowds marched through Poland’s capital, Warsaw, on Sunday, converging around a giant flag commemorating a 1944 uprising against Nazi Germany, as opponents of the governing party sought to rally voters for a critical general election that they see as the last chance to save the country’s hard-won democratic freedoms.The Warsaw city government, which is controlled by the opposition, put the crowd at a million people at its peak. But state-controlled television, which mostly ignored the event, instead broadcasting a pre-election convention by the governing Law and Justice party, estimated fewer than 100,000 had turned out, citing police sources.The march was the biggest display of antigovernment sentiment since Poland’s Solidarity trade union movement rallied against communism in the 1980s. It set the stage for the final stretch of an increasingly nasty election campaign. Poland, bitterly polarized on everything from relations with the rest of Europe to abortion rights, will hold a general election on Oct. 15 that will decide whether the conservative Law and Justice party secures an unprecedented third term in a row in government.In a speech peppered with references to Poland’s past struggles for liberty, Donald Tusk, the main opposition leader, appealed for patriots to cast out a right-wing nationalist government that he said was pitting Poles against Poles, defiling the legacy of national heroes who had resisted foreign occupation.He promised to end what he called “the Polish-Polish war” stoked by the governing party’s denunciation as traitors Poles who deviate from traditional Catholic values or look to the European Union for help against discrimination and government meddling in the judiciary.“Change for the better is inevitable,” he said.Billed as “the march of a million hearts,” the event featured Polish and E.U. flags, as well as a few American ones waved by Poles with family in the United States. Before leading a huge crowd in singing the Polish national anthem, which starts with the words “Poland has not yet perished,” Mr. Tusk said the opening line “has never had such a strong and authentic ring as it does today.”Seeking to reclaim patriotism from Law and Justice, which presents itself as a protector of Polish values and sovereignty against E.U. bureaucrats in Brussels and accuses Mr. Tusk of being a stooge for Germany or Russia or at times both countries, the opposition leader said: “They are not Poland. We are Poland!”Donald Tusk, the leader of opposition Civic Coalition, attended the march in Warsaw on Sunday.Omar Marques/Getty ImagesSpeaking to his own supporters at a pre-election party convention in the southern city of Katowice, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Law and Justice’s chairman and Poland’s de facto leader, mocked Mr. Tusk as “such an idiot” whose victory would lead to the country’s enslavement by foreign powers.He claimed that Mr. Tusk’s term as prime minister, from 2007 to 2014, had made “Poland subordinate to external forces,” especially Germany and Russia. Law and Justice, he said, needed “mobilization, faith, determination and work” to “ensure that Tusk’s system does not return to Poland.”Recent opinion polls give Law and Justice around 38 percent of the vote, compared with 30 percent for Mr. Tusk’s Civic Coalition, an alliance of centrist and center-left forces, with smaller left and far-right parties trailing far behind. The gap narrowed sharply over the summer, but after a full-throated media campaign demonizing Mr. Tusk and his supporters as enemies of the Roman Catholic Church, Law and Justice picked up support, particularly in areas that rely on the party-controlled state broadcasting system.No single party is expected to win a majority in the vote, and the shape of the next government will depend on which of the front-runners — Law and Justice or Civic Coalition — can find allies to form a coalition.As Mr. Tusk spoke to supporters in Warsaw, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, addressed the Law and Justice convention in southern Poland, hammering the party’s favorite theme that the opposition serves German and Russian interests.“Tusk was their handmaiden,” he claimed, referring to energy deals struck between Berlin and Moscow while Mr. Tusk was Poland’s prime minister before taking a job in Brussels as president of the European Council — another strike against him, in the governing party’s view.Worried about competition from Konfederacja, a far-right group that has been vocal about reducing Poland’s assistance to Ukraine, Law and Justice has sent mixed messages in recent weeks about its policy toward Kyiv. It has insisted that it would not do anything to reduce the flow of weapons to fight Russia’s invading forces, while suggesting recently that it might do just that.Less than two weeks ago, Mr. Morawiecki told a national broadcaster that Poland was “no longer transferring any weapons to Ukraine, because we are now arming ourselves with the most modern weapons.” Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, later walked back Mr. Morawiecki’s remarks, clearly made for electoral reasons but still unsettling for Poland’s foreign partners.Desperate to hang on to voters in rural areas, an important base of support, Law and Justice has vowed to halt the import of cheap Ukrainian grain and protect Polish farmers from the damage this has caused to their income. The grain was meant to just transit through Poland, but some of it was siphoned off for sale on the domestic market.Pre-election promises by the Polish government, along with those of Slovakia and Hungary, to halt all deliveries of Ukrainian grain did not stop the leader of a Polish farm lobbying group, Agrounia, from speaking on Sunday in support of the opposition.Law and Justice’s pre-election shifts and maneuvers have confused and annoyed fellow European countries that previously viewed Poland as a solid anchor of the West’s support for Ukraine, particularly those like Germany that Warsaw has repeatedly chided for not being steadfast enough in helping Kyiv.Janusz Michalak, 71, a retired logistics manager who joined the march with his wife, Alicija, said he had lived through communism and worried that Law and Justice — through cynical maneuvers to win support, the tight control of state broadcasting and the demonization of its political foes — want “us silent under their boot like the communists did.”“If we don’t change this government, democracy dies in Poland,” he added.Anatol Magdziarz More

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      Slovakia Appears Set to Join the Putin Sympathizers After Election

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      The front-runner in the parliamentary vote has pledged “not to send a single cartridge” to neighboring Ukraine, a sign of the flagging European support for a victim of Russian aggression.The victory of Robert Fico, a former prime minister who took a pro-Russian campaign stance, in Slovakia’s parliamentary elections is a further sign of eroding support for Ukraine in the West as the war drags on and the front line remains largely static.Slovakia is a small country with historical Russian sympathies, and the nature of the coalition government Mr. Fico will seek to form is unclear. He may lean more toward pragmatism, as Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has done since her election last year. Still, the shift in Slovakia is stark: It was the first country to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine.The election results come as disquiet over the billions of dollars in military aid that the West has provided to Ukraine over the past 19 months has grown more acute in the United States and the European Union, with demands increasing for the money to go to domestic priorities instead.House Republicans declined to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, in Washington last month, and tensions between Kyiv and the White House over Ukrainian military strategy have surfaced. In Central Europe, once the core of fierce anti-Russian sentiment among fearful frontline states that endured decades of harsh communist rule as reluctant members of the Soviet bloc, the war is now viewed with greater nuance.Mr. Fico’s victory, taking about 23 percent of the vote on a platform that included stopping all arms shipments to Ukraine and placing blame for the war equally on the West and Kyiv, is a case in point.He laced social conservatism, nationalism, anti-L.G.B.T.Q. rhetoric and promises of generous welfare handouts in what proved to be an effective anti-liberal agenda, especially in small towns and rural areas.“The wear and tear from the war is more palpable in Central Europe than Western Europe for now,” said Jacques Rupnik, a professor at Sciences Po university in Paris and an expert on the region. “Slovakia demonstrates that the threat at your door does not necessarily mean you are full-hearted in support of Ukraine.”Ukrainian artillery positions firing at enemy forces near the front line in the Donbas region this month.Lynsey Addario for The New York TimesA Globsec survey in March of public opinion across Central and Eastern Europe found that 51 percent of Slovaks believed either the West or Ukraine to be “primarily responsible” for the war. Mr. Fico, who served for more than a decade as prime minister until 2018, played off this sentiment.He adopted some of the rhetoric of Hungary’s pro-Russian prime minister, Viktor Orban, who has resisted the overwhelming Western position on Ukraine that Russia’s brutal invasion of the country was a flagrant violation of international law that must be resisted in the name of liberty, democracy and the sanctity of national sovereignty.“Fico was inspired by Orban, but does not have the same deep ideological roots, and is more of a pragmatist,” said Ludek Sekyra, a Czech businessman who chairs the Sekyra Foundation, a supporter of liberal causes. “He has been adept in exploiting unease over the vast influx of Ukrainian refugees, small-country resentment of the European Union and Russian sympathies that do not exist in the Czech Republic.”A possible coalition with another former prime minister, Peter Pellegrini of the social democratic Voice party, which won almost 15 percent of the vote, may increase the likelihood of pragmatism from Mr. Fico, who was responsible for Slovakia’s adoption of the euro and has shown strong pro-European sentiments in the past.With Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia all showing significant sympathy for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the tides have shifted in this part of Europe. Even Poland, an ardent supporter of Ukraine that has taken in more than 1.5 million refugees from there during the war, recently decided to close its border to low-price Ukrainian grain imports.The governing hard-right nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) in Poland is in a tense electoral standoff this month against the liberal opposition. Although the country’s de facto leader, Jarosław Kaczynski, remains staunchly anti-Russian, his nationalism and conservative values mesh with Mr. Orban’s and Mr. Fico’s. A PiS victory would undermine European unity further as the war shows no sign of a possible resolution.Mr. Kaczynski opposes the kind of European political, military and economic integration of which President Emmanuel Macron of France is a fierce advocate. There has even been murmuring of a possible Polish exit from the European Union — a far-fetched notion but one suggestive of the European tensions that the war has begun to feed.The NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, left, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at a news conference in Kyiv on Thursday.Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEven in Western Europe, a recent German Marshall Fund survey found that support for Ukrainian membership in the European Union stood at just 52 percent in France and 49 percent in Germany. In Germany, only 45 percent of respondents favored Ukrainian membership in NATO.Still, overall, the survey found that on both sides of the Atlantic, some 69 percent of people favor financial support for Ukraine’s reconstruction, while countries including Britain, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Lithuania showed strong support for the Ukrainian cause across the board.“More and more, we are hearing a clear message to Mr. Zelensky: Please cut a deal with Putin,” said Mr. Rupnik.After the immense sacrifice of the Ukrainian people in defense of their country against a flagrant Russian aggression, that, however, is the thing most difficult for Mr. Zelensky to contemplate, let alone pursue.That a country on the Ukrainian border should now have voted for a man who has said he will “not send a single cartridge” of ammunition across that border can only increase the pressure on Ukraine’s leadership.It also poses evident problems for a European Union already worried that Donald J. Trump may retake the White House next year, and facing internal divisions that a Polish election may sharpen further. More

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      Tight Finish in Slovak Vote Makes Government’s Shape Hard to Predict

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      In much of Europe, the election was seen as a bellwether of mainstream support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. But voters seemed most concerned with pocketbook issues.Two exit polls released early Sunday after Slovakia’s parliamentary election showed a tight finish between a liberal party that wants to maintain robust support for Ukraine in its war with Russia and a Russia-friendly populist party, in a vote that many in Europe saw as a bellwether of support for the war.But neither of the top two finishers came close to winning a majority, leaving the shape of the next government — and its policy toward Ukraine — dependent on the performance of smaller parties with widely differing views on Russia and on their readiness to form a coalition with either Progressive Slovakia, a liberal grouping, or a rival party headed by Robert Fico, a pugnacious former prime minister strongly opposed to helping Ukraine.Faced with a plethora of choices between communists and far-right nationalists, Slovakia, a small Central European nation that borders Ukraine, voted on Saturday in a general election freighted with outsize consequences about the West’s support for Ukraine.Twenty-five parties from across the political spectrum put up candidates for Parliament, but the first- and second-place finishers — separated by less than two percentage points, according to exit polls — offered diametrically opposed positions on Ukraine.Exit polls indicated that Progressive Slovakia, a liberal party that wants to continue support for Ukraine, had finished just ahead of Mr. Fico’s Smer party.Analysts cautioned that the official vote count, which was expected to drag on until Sunday morning, could put either party in the lead but with such a narrow margin that both have a shot at forming a coalition government. Early official results that gave Mr. Fico’s party a strong lead came mostly from villages, which are more conservative, and did not include liberal-tilting cities like Bratislava, the capital.The seemingly close result leaves Voice, the social democratic party of Peter Pellegrini, an estranged former ally of Mr. Fico, as a likely kingmaker.Despite near-constant political upheaval since the last election in 2020, Slovakia, a member of the European Union and NATO, has been a particularly robust and steady supporter of Ukraine in its war with Russia, welcoming refugees and providing millions of dollars’ worth of mostly Soviet-era weapons. It was the first country to provide Ukraine with fighter jets and air defense missiles.Given Mr. Fico’s vociferous opposition to aiding the Ukrainians, the election was closely watched across Europe as an indicator of mainstream consensus on the war.But Slovakia’s election, for most voters, was not primarily about Ukraine, said Dominika Hajdu, an analyst with Globsec, a research group based in Bratislava. “It was more about values, conservatism versus liberalism” and bread-and-butter issues, like food and fuel prices.As in many other European countries, Slovakia has a proportional voting system that helps smaller parties win seats, so long as they get 5 percent of the vote, and that makes the shape of the government dependent on which smaller parties meet the threshold.Mr. Pellegrini, whose Voice party finished third, according to exit polls, campaigned on promises to strengthen the state and lower grocery prices. He shares the anti-immigrant views of Mr. Fico, his former boss, and of the far-right nationalist party Republika. Unlike Mr. Fico and the far right, though, Mr. Pellegrini has shown no interest in halting support for Ukraine.Voice, the party of former Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini, could be a kingmaker.Darko Bandic/Associated PressMr. Fico’s party, Smer, led in the polls throughout much of the campaign but lost momentum in recent days, as previously undecided voters, apparently put off by Mr. Fico’s often aggressive style, sought calmer alternative candidates.Mr. Fico served for more than a decade as Slovakia’s prime minister until he was forced to step down in 2018 amid widespread public outrage over the murders of Jan Kuciak, a young investigative journalist who was digging into government corruption, and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova.Mr. Fico was succeeded as prime minister by Mr. Pellegrini, a protégé who later formed his own rival party.Progressive Slovakia, which narrowly failed to win seats in the last election, appears to have benefited in Saturday’s vote by its distance from Mr. Fico and the often squabbling center-right politicians who have run the country for the last three years in a series of unstable coalitions.Previously, the only E.U. member to speak out forcefully against aiding Ukraine was Hungary, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an increasingly authoritarian leader whose constant clashes with his nominal partners in NATO and the E.U. on a range of issues have made his country a noisy outlier with limited influence.Slovakia, governed since 2020 by a series of mainstream, if fractious and very unstable, coalition governments, played an important and early part in rallying Europe’s support to Ukraine and cannot be as easily ignored as Hungary, which officials in Brussels and other major European capitals have come to see as an inveterate troublemaker.Michal Simecka, who leads the Progressive Slovakia party, is a former journalist and a member of the European Parliament. Vladimir Simicek/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe failure of any party to win anything near a majority on Saturday opened the way to laborious back-room haggling over the composition of a new coalition government which could leave either of the probable top two finishers — Mr. Fico’s Smer party or Progressive Slovakia, led by Michal Simecka, a former journalist and liberal member of the European Parliament — in overall charge.Mr. Fico vowed during the campaign to “not send a single cartridge” of ammunition to Ukraine if elected and staked out increasingly pro-Russian views, a position amplified by a galaxy of small but influential Moscow-friendly news media outlets in Slovakia and pro-Russian voices on social media.The vice president of the European Union’s executive arm in Brussels, Vera Jourova, a Czech politician responsible for digital policy, called last week on digital platforms like Facebook and TikTok to do more to blunt what she described as Russia’s “multimillion-euro weapon of mass manipulation” ahead of elections in Slovakia, and in Poland in mid-October.The Slovak vote, she said, was a “test case” for Russia’s ability to influence voters’ choices through online disinformation.Slovakia has deep pools of genuine sympathy for Russia stretching back to the 19th century, when an early Slovak nationalist politician and writer, Ludovit Stur, despairing of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s grip on the region, looked to Russia, a fellow Slavic nation, for help. He suggested that land inhabited by Slovaks be absorbed by the Russian Empire.Russia has worked hard to strengthen these historical sympathies through pro-Russian media outlets and groups like Brat za Brata, or Brother for Brother, a belligerent motorcycle gang affiliated with the Kremlin-sponsored Night Wolves bikers’ group in Russia, which has an influential presence on social media. A Globsec survey in March of public opinion across Eastern and Central Europe found that 51 percent of Slovaks believed either Ukraine or the West to be “primarily responsible” for the war. The figure is much lower in other Eastern European countries.Any shift away from support for Ukraine by whatever coalition government is ultimately formed would be unlikely to reduce the flow of arms significantly, given that Slovakia has already given most of what it can spare. Still, it could help bring into the mainstream calls for an end to support, or at least a reduction, which are so far limited to Europe’s political fringes.The slow progress of Ukraine’s counteroffensive against entrenched Russian positions in Ukraine’s south has dampened expectations of a quick victory and amplified voices in France and other major European countries opposed to an open-ended commitment to arming Ukraine. More

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      What happens to Ukraine if Biden loses in 2024? – podcast

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      Both Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, and Joe Biden, the US president, reiterated their calls for unity against Russia this week at the UN general assembly in New York. In Washington DC, however, Republicans and Democrats in the House hold very different views on the war – how to help, who to help, and which allies they should team up with to try and bring an end to it all. Jonathan Freedland speaks to Susan Glasser of the New Yorker to talk through a question many in Europe are trying to work out: what happens if Biden loses in 2024?

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      Zelenskiy accuses Russia of genocide and urges world leaders to attend peace summit

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      Volodymyr Zelenskiy has told the UN general assembly that Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine and urged world leaders to attend a peace summit to help stop the invasion and future wars of aggression.Appearing in the assembly chamber in New York for the first time in person, the Ukrainian president used the opportunity to try to galvanise support for his country’s plight among many countries, especially in the global south, many of whom have sought to sit on the fence in the face of the full-scale Russian invasion.Zelenskiy said he would give further details of his peace plan, based on national sovereignty and territorial integrity, at a special session of the security council on Wednesday. He said all leaders “who do not tolerate any aggression” would be invited to a peace summit. He did not say when or where the meeting would be held, but he has previously expressed the hope it would happen by autumn this year.Zelenskiy, dressed in an olive green long-sleeved polo shirt, used the word “genocide” to refer to the abduction of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children by Russian occupation authorities, who the Ukrainian president said were being brainwashed into hating their homeland.“Never before has mass kidnapping and deportation become a part of the government policy. Not until now,” Zelenskiy said, adding that the Ukrainian government knew of the names of tens of thousands of abducted children and had “evidence of hundreds of thousands of others kidnapped by Russia in the occupied territories of Ukraine and later deported”.The international criminal court has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and a top aide for their involvement in ordering the child deportations.“We are trying to get the children back home, but time goes by and what will happen to them? Those children in Russia are taught to hate Ukraine and all ties with their families are broken. And this is clearly a genocide,” Zelenskiy said, adding: “When hatred is weaponized against one nation, it never stops there.”The speech was watched from the Russian seats in the chamber by Moscow’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, who wrote in a notebook from time to time and occasionally grinned.Zelenskiy also accused Russia of weaponising food and energy, noting “there are many conventions that restrict weapons but there are no real restrictions on weaponisation”.He explained how Ukraine and its partners were trying to work around the Russian blockade of Black Sea ports, but he had bitter criticism for Ukraine’s neighbours who have periodically blocked the export of Ukrainian produce westwards for fear it would compete with domestic output and lower prices.He said “some of our friends in Europe” whose expressions of solidarity were “political theatre” were, by restricting imports from Ukraine, “helping set the stage for a Moscow actor”.He said that Russia, having long used oil and gas as a weapon, was now weaponising nuclear energy, pointing to the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which he said Moscow had turned into a potential “dirty bomb”.The goal of the Russian military campaign, the president said, was to turn Ukraine and its people, land and resources “into a weapon against you, against the international rules-based order”. If the Russians succeeded, he warned, “many seats in the general assembly hall may become empty”.He said the Ukrainian peace blueprint, which involves a Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory, accountability for war crimes and restitution for damages, represented “a real chance to end aggression on the terms of the nation which was attacked”.Zelenskiy added: “While Russia is pushing the world to a final war, Ukraine is doing everything to ensure that after this Russian aggression, no one in the world will dare to attack any nation.” More

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      Donald Trump pleased at praise from Putin: ‘I like that he said that’

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      Donald Trump enjoyed hearing that he had drawn praise from the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, the former US president and frontrunner for the 2024 Republican White House nomination has said.Told during a recorded interview with Kristen Welker, the new NBC Meet the Press moderator, that Putin had fawned over his stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump replied: “I like that he said that. Because that means what I’m saying is right.”Trump’s remarks to Welker – circulated by NBC on Friday to promote the interview with the ex-president, which is scheduled to air on Sunday morning – drew condemnation from some political quarters. In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, the Republicans against Trump group shared a clip of the comments and wrote to its nearly half-million followers: “A vote for Trump is a vote against America.”One of the overarching themes during Trump’s lone term in the Oval Office centered on Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won.Putin has endorsed Trump’s repeated boasts that he could bring Russia’s conflict with Ukraine to an end within a matter of hours if he were elected to a second term in the White House.“Mr Trump says he will resolve all burning issues within several days, including the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin said at an economic forum in Russia recently. “We cannot help but feel happy about it.”Trump’s boasts on that topic have earned him derision from his Republican and Democratic opponents, saying a conclusion to the conflict would require a surrender to demands from Putin, whose forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022. But, in his conversation with Welker, Trump doubled down on his position, saying he would simply get Putin and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy “into a room and I would get a deal worked out”.Asked by Welker for specifics on precisely how he would bring a swift conclusion to the war in Ukraine, Trump declined to answer, saying: “If I tell you exactly, I lose all my bargaining chips.”“I mean, you can’t really say exactly what you’re going to do,” Trump told Welker, according to NBC. “But I would say certain things to Putin. I would say certain things to Zelenskiy.”Welker noted to Trump that Russian bombs had destroyed maternity wards, and forces under Putin’s command had deliberately attacked civilians. Furthermore, the international criminal court (ICC) in the Hague in March issued an arrest warrant for Putin, accusing him of war crimes in connection with the abduction of Ukrainian children.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s all terrible,” Trump told Welker.Trump has been facing more than 90 criminal charges across four separate indictments charging him with attempted subversion of the 2020 election that he lost to his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, retention of classified information after his presidency and hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.Civil cases he is grappling with include a $250m lawsuit by the New York attorney general about his business affairs as well as a defamation claim stemming from a rape accusation that a judge has deemed to be “substantially true”.Trump nonetheless denies all wrongdoing and has sought to cast himself as the victim of political persecution. He also maintains substantial leads in national and key state polls regarding the 2024 Republican presidential primary. More

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      G20 Declaration Omits Criticism of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

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      A painstakingly negotiated declaration Saturday evening at the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi omitted any condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or its brutal conduct of the war, instead lamenting the “suffering” of the Ukrainian people.It was an eye opening departure from a similar document agreed to less than a year ago in Bali, when leaders acknowledged different views over the invasion but still issued a strong condemnation of the Russian invasion and called on Moscow to withdraw its troops.This year, amid low expectations that the divided group would reach any sort of consensus with Ukraine, the declaration pointed to past United Nations resolutions condemning the war and noted the “adverse impact of wars and conflicts around the world.” The statement also called on Russia to allow the export of grain and fertilizer from Ukraine and “to support a comprehensive, just and durable peace.”American officials defended the agreement, saying it built on the statement released last year and that the United States was still pressing for peace in Ukraine.“From our perspective, it does a very good job of standing up for the principle that states cannot use force to seek territorial acquisition or to violate the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of other states,” Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters.But Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, said on Facebook that the omission of Russian aggression was “nothing to be proud of.”Mr. Biden and his advisers focused on what the new declaration had achieved: It included new language on the issue of global debt and on overhauling institutions like the World Bank to address the growing strains on poorer countries; an invitation to the African Union to join the G20; and a push for more financing to help vulnerable nations deal with the costs of dealing with climate change. The declaration also underscored the potential of digital technologies to increase inclusion in global economies.The president joined other leaders in announcing a project to create a rail and shipping corridor linking India to the Middle East and, eventually, Europe. It was a promise of new technological and trade pathways, they said, in a part of the world where deeper economic cooperation was overdue.The project lacked key details, including a time frame or budget. Even so, it represented much softer than usual rhetoric about Russia from Mr. Biden and other Western leaders, who have spent the better part of two years spending billions on arming Ukraine and burning untold domestic political capital building support for the war. Facing a summit rife with deep divisions, Mr. Biden did not speak publicly about the war or almost anything else, except to say “it would be nice” if President Xi Jinping of China, who skipped the summit along with the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, had attended.Mr. Biden spent most of his time at the summit quietly nurturing his relationship with Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, who has continued his country’s traditional practice of abstaining from superpower skirmishes, but who has his own tensions with China. He is also keenly interested in presenting himself — and his country — as an ascendant global player.“Biden, like previous presidents, is trying to bring India closer,” Richard N. Haass, a foreign policy veteran and former president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “He’s having limited success, but that’s the nature of the relationship. That’s baked into the cake here.”Mr. Haass said that joint declarations often take on the characteristics of the host country. In this case, he said, it seemed that “the host determined not to antagonize either China or Russia.” He called the statement — and the economic summit — an example of “incremental diplomacy” and not a forum where the conflict could be resolved.White House officials did not publicly say why the United States would sign onto a joint agreement that did so little to keep pressure on Russia, though the Russians had loudly complained about the focus on them. (Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, cited the “Ukrainization” of the summit to explain Mr. Putin’s absence.)Besides Ukraine, there were other points of contention over the declaration. Mr. Sullivan was asked about reports that the Chinese had objected to language in a draft that confirmed that the United States would host the G20 meeting in 2026. “On the issue of China, all I can say is the communiqué is done,” he said.The absence of two of the group’s most influential leaders, coupled with the ongoing war in Ukraine, had raised questions about whether the summit meeting could achieve much of anything given the current geopolitical divisions. Biden administration officials spent much of their time with reporters assuring them that the summit was still effective.Mr. Biden’s advisers pointed to to the announcement of plans to build a rail and shipping corridor from India through the Middle East to Europe as evidence that the group could build connections even in fraught territory.At the event presenting the initiative, Mr. Biden shook hands with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, which has agreed to participate, something he had pointedly avoided doing when visiting the kingdom last year.The announcement comes as the Biden administration has worked, so far unsuccessfully, to broker an ambitious diplomatic agreement that would help the Saudis normalize diplomatic relations with Israel. The United States and the European Union also announced on Saturday a project that would explore the creation of a rail line between Zimbabwe and Angola.Unlike in years past, where he held high-stakes meetings with individual allies and competitors, Mr. Biden stayed in the background for most of his time in India, content to let Mr. Modi take the lead. On Sunday, Mr. Biden will travel to Vietnam, where he is expected to celebrate a new upgrade in relations with Vietnam, despite concerns about the country’s recent authoritarian crackdown and repression.Unlike his predecessor and possible 2024 competitor, former president Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden’s brand of personalized statesmanship has long been centered around the belief that the best relationships — and even some of the worst ones — are best handled through one-on-one interactions and private negotiations. At forums like the G20, Mr. Biden has often presented his version of leadership as a steadier alternative to Mr. Trump’s bombastic and unpredictable style.Mr. Modi, for his part, was so intent on showcasing the promise and potential of India to the rest of the world that his government effectively shut down a city of 20 million people for the occasion. Leading up to the event, Mr. Modi’s likeness was plastered on thousands of posters throughout New Delhi.On Saturday, speaking in Hindi, Mr. Modi began his inaugural address to the group of leaders by paying respects to the people of Morocco, where an earthquake killed hundreds. He ended his remarks by announcing the invitation to the African Union and hugging Azali Assoumani, the chairman of the bloc and the president of Comoros. Officials offered Mr. Assoumani a flag, a country nameplate and a seat at the table.India’s G20 presidency comes at a moment of contradiction for the country: Its rise to a bigger role on the world stage coincides with increasing divisions at home. While Mr. Modi is tapping into India’s strengths — a rapidly growing economy, a young work force and a strong tradition of technological and scientific innovation — to transform it into a developed nation, he is making sure that nation is reshaped along Hindu-first lines.The increasing aggression of his right-wing support base has created a combustible reality, with religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims frequently erupting in clashes.Mr. Biden notably stayed away from the democracy-versus-autocracy themes that shape much of his messaging overseas and at home. (At one point, Mr. Biden did pose for a photo with the leaders of several other democracies, including India, Brazil and South Africa.) And, his advisers stressed that the G20 was not competing with forums like the group of nations known as BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.They pointed out that reaching a consensus on the declaration, even if it was a softer one, was a labor of effective diplomacy.“The G20 is just a more diverse body with a wider range of views,” Jon Finer, the president’s deputy national security adviser, said. “It gives us a chance to interact with and work with and take constructive steps with a wider range of countries, including some we don’t see eye-to-eye with on every issue.”Mujib Mashal, Peter Baker, Alex Travelli and Damien Cave contributed reporting from New Delhi. More