Ukraine war sends message to ‘aggressors around the world’, says Blinken at Quad meeting
From left to right – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, pose for a photo after the Indo-Pacific Quad Foreign Ministers roundtable in New Delhi, India, on March 3. (Photo: Money Sharma/AFP/Getty Images)
Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and the support Kyiv is receiving from countries around the world, sends a powerful message to “would-be aggressors around the world,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit.
“Part of the reason that countries outside of Europe are also so focused on this and are working to support Ukraine and meet the challenge is because they know it could have an effect here,” Blinken said in New Delhi.
“If we let Russia do what it’s doing in Ukraine with impunity, we’ll be sending a message to would-be aggressors around the world that they too can get away with it.”
Blinken met with his counterparts from India, Japan and Australia, a grouping known as the “Quad” or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.
The Quad is an informal security-focused group that dates back to the early 2000s, though it has become more active in recent years as part of efforts to counter Chinese reach and territorial claims in Indo- Peaceful.
Blinken added that the challenges facing people around the world cannot be addressed by “one country acting alone.”
“The great power of the Quad is that you have four like-minded countries, united in their core values, united in their core interests, bringing different strengths, experiences, different comparative ways of addressing these issues,” he said.
Although he did not specify any “possible aggressor”, he made several veiled references, saying that the Quad is working to increase the knowledge of the maritime domain of the countries, that is, a greater vigilance of what happens in their waters – and to crack down on illegal fishing. .