Xi, Putin will attend the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, in November

(Reuters) – An adviser to Indonesia’s president said on Friday that Chinese and Russian leaders Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will attend the G20 summit in the resort island of Bali in November.

Andy Widjajanto, a former cabinet secretary and unofficial advisor to President Joko Widodo, better known as Jokowi, told Reuters that the two leaders would take part in the summit.

“Jokowi told me that Xi and Putin are planning to come in Bali,” Widjajanto, head of the Institute for National Resilience, told Reuters.

On Thursday, Jokowi told Bloomberg News that both leaders had given him their assurances. Indonesian presidential officials did not respond to requests to confirm the report.

China’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. A Kremlin spokesman declined to comment on Bloomberg, but another official familiar with the situation told the news agency that Putin plans to attend the meeting in person.

The trip will be significant given that it will be Xi’s first time outside China since January 2020, when he visited Myanmar.

China maintains a COVID-free policy which has closed its borders to international travel.

Since then, Xi has made his only trip outside mainland China on June 30, visiting Hong Kong to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the territory’s handover from British control.

Xi is widely expected to secure an unprecedented third term of leadership during a five-year conference of the ruling Communist Party scheduled for this fall, likely before he heads to Bali for the G20 meeting in mid-November.

No dates have been announced for the party congress, but the last two were held in late October and early November.

Reportedly, Chinese officials are planning a meeting in November in Southeast Asia between Xi and US President Joe Biden, who is expected to attend the G20 summit in Bali, according to newspaper A. Report In The Wall Street Journal.

As chair of the G20 this year, Indonesia has faced pressure from Western countries to withdraw its invitation to Putin over his country’s invasion of Ukraine, which his government describes as a “special military operation”.

Indonesia also invited Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to attend the Bali summit.

Jokowi has sought to position himself as a mediator between the warring nations, and in recent months has traveled to meet with the Ukrainian and Russian presidents to call for an end to the war, and to seek ways to ease the global food crisis.

Jokowi said this week that both countries had accepted Indonesia as a “bridge of peace”.

(Reporting by Ananda Theresia and Tony Munro) Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor and Kate Lamb; Editing by Jerry Doyle

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