Aurelia Butler

DUBAI (Reuters) -Saudi Arabia faces the risk of an economic contraction this year following its decision to extend crude production cuts, highlighting its still heavy reliance on oil as reforms to diversify are slow moving.Riyadh says it aims to stabilise the oil market by extending a voluntary oil output cut of 1 million barrels per day until the end of 2023. Its announcement on Tuesday sent oil prices above $90 for the first time this year, but they are below average prices of around $100 a barrel last year in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Declining oil production and revenue this year could see Saudi Arabia’s economy shrink for the first time since 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, although a hefty dividend from state oil producer Saudi Aramco (TADAWUL:2222) should provide a cushion for public finances.Cutting oil output for another three months, on top of production cuts earlier in the year, translates into a 9% fall in production in 2023 – the biggest production drop in nearly 15 years for OPEC’s de facto leader – said analyst Justin Alexander at Khalij Economics.Monica Malik, chief economist at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, now sees Saudi gross domestic product (GDP) contracting 0.5% this year, revising her forecast from last month of 0.2% growth this year, while Alexander said non-oil growth would need to average about 5% this year to maintain growth.”This was actually precisely the growth rate in H1, but leading indicators such as the PMI (purchasing managers’ index) have pointed to a modest slowdown, so that might be hard to sustain in H2. As a result a small real GDP contraction is looking likely,” Alexander, also Gulf analyst at GlobalSource Partners, said.Last year the Saudi economy grew 8.7% and generated a fiscal surplus of 2.5% of GDP, its first surplus in nine years as oil soared to highs near $124. This year the government has forecast a surplus of 0.4% of GDP, but some economists say even that may be optimistic. Saudi Aramco, 90% government owned and awash with cash after last year’s boom, said last month it would fork out a near $10 billion dividend to shareholders in the third quarter from its free cash flow – the first of several extra payouts on top of its expected more than $150 billion base dividend for 2022 and 2023 combined.”Even so, we think that the government will run a budget deficit of 1.5% of GDP this year – well below the Budget estimate for a 0.4% of GDP surplus,” James Swanston of Capital Economics said in a note.The Saudi finance ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The kingdom’s deficit stood at 8.2 billion riyals ($2.19 billion) for the first half of this year.An official from the International Monetary Fund, which had forecast a 1.2% of GDP deficit this year, said on Thursday the budget would be closer to balance as a result of the extra Aramco payout and, unlike a growing number of economists, the IMF also believes the economy will manage slight growth this year.PIF KEEPS SPENDINGGrowth in the non-oil economy remains strong for now.The Public Investment Fund (PIF), the sovereign wealth fund tasked with driving Saudi Arabia’s ambitious Vision 2030 economic blueprint, has spent billions on top global soccer stars, golf, tourism and entertainment, and electric vehicle makers.”Certainly, we see no signs that the Public Investment Fund’s acquisition streak is cooling,” RBC Capital Markets said in a note.PIF did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Still, reforms and state-led investment have seen the share of the non-oil sector’s contribution to GDP rise to 44% of GDP last year, up just 0.7 percentage point from 2016.”I think the reality has sunk in that the pace of change cannot move as quickly as had been hoped and the economy remains dependent upon hydrocarbons and will do so for some time,” said Neil Quilliam, associate fellow at Chatham House in London.Up to $50 billion worth of fresh Aramco shares could be offered on the Riyadh bourse before the end of the year, according to reports, generating vast funds that could be spent on big projects. The government has transferred 8% of Aramco to PIF and one of its subsidiaries.PIF’s funding comes from capital injections and asset transfers from the government, debt and earnings from investments. However, it reported a loss of $15.6 billion last year, mainly due to its SoftBank (TYO:9984) Vision Fund I investment and a wider market downturn, especially in tech.”So far PIF investments haven’t proven to be as fruitful as had been hoped and neither has the country attracted the FDI (foreign direct investment) it had hoped either… So Aramco is going to be the horse that they keep on beating,” Quilliam said.($1 = 3.7507 riyals) More

Dalian and Shenyang, two of the most populous cities in the northeastern province of Liaoning, separately announced they will no longer restrict the number of properties residents can buy in most parts of the city, while offering subsidies for buyers and tax relief for sellers.Nanjing, the provincial capital of affluent Jiangsu province, said it would let people buy flats without proof of eligibility in four districts, effectively easing its last restrictions on home purchases.These announcements come on the heels of a series of nationwide support measures for the property sector, including lower mortgage rates for first-time homebuyers.China’s debt-riddled property sector accounts for one-quarter of the state’s economic activity. It had been on a downward spiral since 2021 when the government moved to stop developers from accumulating debt. More

On an intensive poultry farm in North Herefordshire, farmer Jo Hilditch is walking through one of her 22 chicken sheds, picking up flapping birds and checking for signs of illness and injury. The 20,000 plump five to six-week-old chickens occupying the shed will shortly be transported to a series of nearby facilities by the farm’s processor, Avara, where they will be stunned, slaughtered, cleaned, packaged and then delivered to supermarket shelves. It is a well-oiled process, with one critical flaw: Hilditch, a fourth-generation farmer, says she is not being paid enough to do anything more than get by.The same message echoes across a sector that operates on ultra-low margins. The price of chicken, producers argue, is simply too low to keep up with an aggressive rise in input costs. A medium chicken from Tesco that feeds up to six people is priced at £4.20, for example. At discounter Lidl, a similar-sized product is £3.79.“The profits, even historically when it was going well, have not been fantastic,” says Hilditch, whose farm produces 5.5mn chickens a year yet generates a turnover of £9mn. “I find it extraordinary that you can buy a chicken for the same price as a latte.”Hilditch’s chicken farm is a microcosm of many of the pressures that British companies are currently facing — not just in the food industry, but across large parts of manufacturing.For much of the postwar period, poultry was one of the fastest growing and productive sectors in UK farming. Meat consumption tripled between 1960 and 1980, with the average consumer today eating 35kg of the protein a year. However, in recent years it has faced a flurry of different upheavals that together have thrust the sector into crisis — from Covid-19 and its economic after-effects to Brexit and the war in Ukraine. More than most other products, the industry’s problems encapsulate not only the fragility of the UK’s food systems but the issues plaguing the broader economy: inflation, labour shortages and rising wages.

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As a result, chicken farms and processing plants have closed or scaled back operations. Production of broiler chickens, those reared exclusively for meat production on an industrial scale, dropped 11.4 per cent in July compared with 12 months ago, according to official statistics. Exports have almost halved, from 375,000 tonnes in 2020 to 200,000 tonnes last year. Food producers, including in dairy and horticulture, are begging retailers to put up the price of staple foods. This, they hope, will allow them to turn a profit and help boost productivity.“The last two years have really been a perfect storm,” says Hilditch. “Chicken is too cheap and we are not able to reinvest.”Yet as people grapple with the worst cost of living crisis in memory, the prospect of asking consumers to pay more for food is hard to swallow. Doing nothing, however, may be even harder to digest.Younger, cheaper, faster Meat was not always so easily affordable. Before intensive farming spread to the UK from the US in the 1950s, poultry was considered a luxury that families ate no more than once a week. It was Anthony Fisher, the founder of free market think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, who transformed a cottage industry into one of Britain’s fastest-growing sectors. By 1964, Fisher’s company Buxted Chickens was processing more than 500,000 birds each week across three plants. Buxted was sold to a company that was later acquired by 2 Sisters Food Group. Alongside processing giants Avara and Moy Park, 2 Sisters has continued Fisher’s legacy, increasing productivity and driving down the price of chicken through a relentless process of supply chain consolidation, selective breeding and cheap labour.

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As a result, poultry supply chains are among the most integrated in the agricultural sector. The biggest processors manage an end-to-end system that encompasses farming, feed manufacturing, egg hatcheries, butchery, packaging and transportation.Supermarkets played a big role in the standardisation of products, marketing and pricing. In the 1950s, retailers such as Sainsbury’s urged producers to reduce the size of the birds from 5lb to 3lb in order to increase yields — achieved by slaughtering chickens at 10 weeks old rather than 12. Today, because of genetic selection techniques, broiler chickens can grow four times larger than in the ’50s. Over 90 per cent of the chickens in the UK today are bred to grow quickly, and slaughtered at under six weeks, according to the RSPCA. “Processors have made the supply chain extremely efficient and made chicken affordable for consumers,” says Adam Couch, chief executive of Cranswick, one of the UK’s big meat producers. “But that competitive nature means margins have been wafer thin.”For farmers like Hilditch, this narrow margin is becoming unsustainable. This year, her poultry business was operating at a loss amid soaring agricultural input costs.

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Her usual electricity bill of £160,000 a year has almost tripled, labour costs rose 10 per cent, while additional costs like cleaning and replacing equipment rose 20 per cent. Though the cost of energy, feed and fertiliser have fallen since their highs at the end of last year, they remain well above pre-Ukraine war levels. Hilditch and other farmers that supply Avara secured a 10p increase over the summer, which has offered some breathing room. But this only covers input costs, she says, with nothing left over to invest in innovation, maintaining equipment to a high level or to fund sustainability projects. The farmer took out a £3mn loan to install boilers that convert chicken faeces into energy which is then used to heat her chicken sheds, with the help of the government’s Renewable Heat Incentive scheme. Hilditch planned to repay the loan in seven years, but now estimates it will be closer to 10. “A lot of our members feel they are taking all the risk with little reward,” says Aimee Mahoney, a poultry adviser at the National Farmers Union. “Farmers are being forced to absorb costs without getting anything back from the market. And without hope of making profit, some are choosing not to restock at all and use their farm buildings for other produce.”“It feels like everything is stacked against them,” she adds.Devastating consequencesThe financial pressures are being felt across the sector. In March, 700 people in Anglesey, Wales, lost their jobs when 2 Sisters shut down a 50-year-old processing site in Llangefni. Similarly, Avara, which is co-owned by US agricultural group Cargill, will close its site in the Welsh market town of Abergavenny later this month, citing increasing costs. Jo Hilditch on her poultry farm in North Herefordshire. She says she finds it ‘extraordinary that you can buy a chicken for the same price as a latte’ © Andrew Fox/FTRichard Griffiths, chief executive of the British Poultry Council, an industry body, says the financial burden was not being passed on to the marketplace. “This is having a devastating effect on our members, who are being forced to reduce production because they cannot afford to grow birds they will not get paid for,” he says. In the year to May 2022, Avara posted a loss of £16.1mn, compared to profits after tax of £16.9mn the year before. Their competitor 2 Sisters reported an operating loss of £29.5mn in the year to July 2022, an improvement on a loss of £44.85mn a year earlier. “Today’s trading environment reinforces the need for commodity food businesses to look for opportunities to mitigate inflation through increased productivity and efficiency,” says Avara. “We’ve made some significant steps in this regard . . . but it will take some time for the benefits of our actions to be fully realised.”The cost of fuel has been particularly difficult for poultry, one of the most energy-intensive agri-food sectors, as it relies on high quantities of gas to provide the temperature controls in chicken sheds. Producers are also exposed to fluctuations in feed prices, which rocketed last year alongside the cost of wheat.Couch, the Cranswick chief executive, says while feed costs were subsiding, the uncertain situation in Ukraine, one of the world’s largest producers of grain, is causing extreme volatility in the feed markets. “It depends how long your feed book is and how much you’ve paid forward,” he adds. “We’re all extremely nervous.”Men inspect chickens at a packing station in 1956. Meat consumption tripled between 1960 and 1980, with the average consumer today eating 35kg of the protein a year © Bert Brown/BIPs/Getty ImagesHe also worries that the “huge indebtedness” in the wider food manufacturing sector is stymying innovation, with long-term consequences such as falling British production and a growing reliance on imports. “That’s a real concern with rising interest rates, especially when it comes to refinancing,” he says. Cranswick itself reported better than expected profits this year, having invested early in automation to boost efficiency. Food producers have been quick to point the finger at supermarkets for driving down costs, but some in the poultry processing industry acknowledge that grocers are facing their own pressures.“It seems there’s a tendency to try and pit different members of the supply chain against each other, which isn’t our experience,” says Avara. “Over the last 12 to 18 months retailers have raised prices, but it’s been near impossible to keep pace with unprecedented inflation, brought on by unprecedented circumstances.”Supermarkets use products like chicken as so-called loss leaders — products that are sold at a lower price than the cost of production — in order to draw customers away from competitors. Since the arrival of German discounters Aldi and Lidl to the UK, which have undercut prices at traditional supermarkets such as Tesco and Morrisons, the grocery sector has been locked into a race to the bottom on prices. This is “driving disinflation into the country’s food system”, argues Clive Black, an analyst at Shore Capital. A woman shops for chicken at a Lidl supermarket in London. The UK grocery sector has been locked into a race to the bottom on prices since the arrival of German discounters Aldi and Lidl © Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images“If you look at the food system today there is very little new capacity because the return on capital is not there,” he adds, blaming intense competition in the retail arena. “It’s the most affordable protein but in terms of a sustainable food system, the UK consumer does not pay enough for [chicken].” The Brexit factorBeyond the supermarket price wars, there is another factor exacerbating the poultry industry’s woes: the UK’s departure from the EU. Like many industries across the food and farming sector and beyond, business leaders are crying out for the government to broaden its seasonal worker scheme to lower the cost of labour. Since the end of freedom of movement, some businesses are currently paying more than £10,000 to secure each migrant worker not covered by the scheme. Cranswick’s Couch says he went to Priti Patel, then home secretary, in 2020 to warn the company would have trouble recruiting workers unless the government relaxed its post-Brexit immigration policy, but feels industry’s pleas have been dismissed. In the past few years, thousands of healthy pigs were culled on farms due to a shortage of abattoir workers. Similarly, millions of pounds’ worth of fruit and vegetables were left rotting in fields.Pickers work at a farm in Wirral. Since the end of freedom of movement, some businesses are currently paying more than £10,000 to secure each migrant worker not covered by the scheme © Colin McPherson/FTSince then, Cranswick has replaced European labour with butchers from the Philippines, which costs £12,000 to bring each worker to the UK.Avara, who says the challenge of finding workers “remains very difficult”, is making changes to manage the shortage, like opening a site in an area with a stronger labour market.The government’s own review into labour shortages in the food supply chain found that the UK’s “chronic” lack of workers must be addressed if the country is to increase its self-sufficiency. The report concluded that insufficient labour could lead to supply shortages of certain essential foods and that without a ready supply of migrant labour, there was a danger that production may relocate abroad. Some businesses had already started to relocate their production overseas, the report found. The risk of lower production in the UK is that supermarkets become more reliant on imports from other countries. “When the environment stabilises we’ll have to go back to finding a way of being more productive,” he added. But that may be easier said than done. “As soon as you start losing capacity, it is very difficult to rebuild.” ‘A cesspit of poultry production’For experts and animal welfare groups, a more pertinent question is whether the country should be aiming to increase poultry production at all. The sheer volume of chicken produced in the UK has become an environmental issue, notably in the lush Wye Valley, on the England-Wales border, where phosphates from chicken manure have contributed to the growth of harmful algal blooms in the river Wye. The algae kills off the natural river weed that serves as nurseries for fish and is contributing to the decline of endangered species.“That area has become a cesspit of poultry production,” says Tim Lang, emeritus professor of food policy at City University, who advocates for processing to be decentralised and dispersed across regions to prevent pollution. “The ecological damage has been an illustration of anarchic — not orderly — capitalism.” Campaigners took the government to the high court this year over the legality of fast-growing broilers they call Frankenchickens, bred to produce as much meat in as little time as possible. Such is their size, their legs often cannot support their weight. The Human Society accused the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) of allowing the practice in breach of animal welfare regulations — a claim a judge rejected.

Protesters support chicken welfare outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Campaigners took the government to the high court over the legality of ‘Frankenchickens’, bred to produce as much meat in as little time as possible © Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Hilditch, the farmer, says consumers would need to pay more if they wanted things to change. “If enough consumers said, ‘we really care about the welfare of the chickens we eat’ and were prepared to pay more, then you could rear chickens with even more space and even better conditions,” she argues. “But when consumers continue to buy chicken for £2, there’s no price incentive [for farmers].”Yet even though the UK has some of the cheapest food in the world, many people are struggling to afford protein. The number of children in food poverty has doubled to 4mn during the cost of living crisis, according to data from non-profit the Food Foundation. “It’s easy for me to say [chicken] is too cheap,” says Lang, who advised the government on food and sustainable development in the 2000s. “But it is also unaffordable, depending on which figures you are looking at.” Prices do not necessarily need to rise, he adds, but more of the share needs to go to primary producers, to help them “do the right thing”. Farming minister Mark Spencer says the government has taken action to support the poultry sector, including confirming 2,000 seasonal worker visas for 2023 and 2024. “We know they have faced pressures given the impact of the war in Ukraine on input costs, as well as global market volatilities,” he adds. One thing producers, processors and campaigners agree on is the need for a joined up strategy encompassing food security, health and environmental issues. In 2010, then prime minister Gordon Brown introduced the Food 2030 strategy, but it was abandoned when the coalition government was elected later that year. Another effort was made in 2019, when then environment secretary Michael Gove asked Leon Restaurants co-founder Henry Dimbleby to come up with a national food strategy. This was largely watered down, delayed or ignored, and Dimbleby subsequently resigned earlier this year.“The British tradition has been a reluctant food policy,” says Lang. “They’ll only respond to crises.” For poultry farmers, the crisis is here, but there is no sign of a solution.Data visualisation by Keith Fray More

Legal disputes in the shipping industry have hit the highest level in at least seven years, as declining profits and trade disruption caused by the Ukraine war lead to clashes between shipowners and their customers, according to analysis by lawyers.Shipping companies were last year involved in around 2,000 out-of-court arbitration cases — shipowners’ preferred route for resolving commercial disputes — in London and Singapore, according to data compiled by law firm HFW and shared with the Financial Times. The combined number represents a 12 per cent increase over 2021 and is the highest recorded in the two cities — the leading destinations for such cases — since the law firm began compiling figures in 2016. It also surpasses the number of cases in 2020, when severe congestion at ports following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic led to numerous disputes over shipping delays, lawyers said.Sanctions on trading certain goods with Russia and the increased danger to vessels in the Black Sea region, as well as pressure to mitigate a fall in earnings amid a widespread economic slowdown, were behind the tensions, shipping lawyers say.“There’s probably more friction [than before],” said Mike Ritter, a shipping lawyer at HFW. The Ukraine war was having “a momentous impact” and driving “more emotive” disputes, with shipowners seeking to oppose potentially dangerous requests to sail near Ukraine, he added.“I certainly don’t see that there will be a drop” in legal cases this year, he said.The rise in commercial spats is the latest sign of how quickly recent hits to global trade have reversed the fortunes of many shipping companies. Since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last February, sanctions on trading Russian products have upended an industry that delivers up to 90 per cent of the world’s goods and depends on smooth trade relations between countries.A decline in consumer spending globally has also hit the outlook for container shipping companies, which only recently recorded record profits during the Covid-19 lockdowns amid an online shopping boom and bottlenecks at ports that drove up the cost of shipping.Kirsty MacHardy, a shipping lawyer at Stephenson Harwood, said the industry was making so much money in 2021 that companies were reluctant to interrupt business and contest legal challenges from customers, such as disputes over the speed and performance of a vessel. But with profits now falling, they were more motivated to fight claims over money.MacHardy said Stephenson Harwood had also received inquiries from shipping groups seeking to refuse requests to sail to Russia. But she added that clients were often unable to tear up existing contracts and only a fraction of these cases made it to an arbitration hearing, as there was no blanket ban on trading with Russia.Shipping companies generally prefer to settle disputes through arbitration hearings as these remain private.HFW said it had obtained its data from five leading arbitration centres and organisations that represent arbitrators, the professional adjudicators appointed to settle disputes.The law firm said its analysis gave a “broad-brush picture” of the trend in maritime arbitration cases, as the organisations defined such cases differently. Some only provided data for the entire transportation or commodities sectors rather than shipping alone, although these figures made up only about 5 per cent of HFW’s overall numbers for 2022. Patrick Murphy, a shipping lawyer at Clyde & Co, also said sanctions were likely driving more “frictional” disputes over contracts.But he added that the current level of cases did not compare to the period following the financial crash in 2008, when the shipping industry “went into freefall”. That year, the London Maritime Arbitrators Association estimated that 2,058 cases were referred to it, compared with 1,807 in 2022. More

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -The Group of 20 nations adopted a consensus declaration at a summit on Saturday that avoided condemnation of Russia for the war in Ukraine but called on all states to refrain from the use of force to seize territory.Prime Minister Narendra Modi of host India announced that the Leaders’ Declaration had been adopted on the first day of the weekend summit.The consensus came as a surprise as the group is deeply divided over the war in Ukraine, with Western nations earlier pushing for strong condemnation of Russia in the Leaders’ Declaration, while other countries demanded a focus on broader economic issues.There was no immediate reaction from most other members.”We call on all states to uphold the principles of international law including territorial integrity and sovereignty, international humanitarian law, and the multilateral system that safeguards peace and stability,” the declaration said.”We … welcome all relevant and constructive initiatives that support a comprehensive, just, and durable peace in Ukraine. “The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible,” the statement added. The declaration also called for the implementation of the Black Sea (NYSE:SE) initiative for the safe flow of grain, food and fertiliser from Ukraine and Russia. Moscow pulled out of the agreement in July over what it called a failure to meet its demands to implement a parallel agreement easing rules for its own food and fertiliser exports. “On the back of the hard work of all the teams, we have received consensus on the G20 Leaders Summit Declaration. I announce the adoption of this declaration,” Modi told the leaders in New Delhi, including U.S. President Joe Biden and heads of government and state from across the world.The differing views on the war had prevented agreement on even a single communique at ministerial meetings during India’s G20 presidency so far this year. The declaration also said the group agreed to address debt vulnerabilities in low and middle-income countries “in an effective, comprehensive and systematic manner”, but did not make any fresh action plan.It said countries pledged to strengthen and reform multilateral development banks, while it accepted the proposal for tighter regulations of cryptocurrencies.It also agreed that the world needs a total of $4 trillion of low-cost financing annually for the energy transition, with a high share of renewable energy in the primary energy mix. The statement called for accelerating efforts towards a “phasedown of unabated coal power”, but said this had to be done “in line with national circumstances and recognizing the need for support towards just transitions”.HELP FROM DEVELOPING NATIONSIndia’s G20 sherpa, the country representative to the bloc, said the host nation worked “very closely” with Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia to reach a consensus on the language on the war in Ukraine in the summit document.India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said China, Russia’s main major ally, was supportive of the outcome.”Differing viewpoints and interests were at play, but we were able to find common ground on all issues,” he told a press conference.At the start of the day, Biden and other leaders were driven through deserted streets to a new, $300 million conch-shaped convention centre called Bharat Mandapam, opposite a 16th-century stone fort.Many businesses, offices and schools have been closed in the city and traffic restricted as part of security measures to ensure the smooth running of the most high-powered meeting to be hosted by the country. Modi inaugurated the meeting by calling on members to end a “global trust deficit” and announced that the bloc was granting permanent membership to the African Union in an effort to make it more representative.Despite the compromise over the Leaders’ Declaration, the summit had been expected to be dominated by the West and its allies. Chinese President Xi Jinping is skipping the meeting and has sent Premier Li Qiang instead, while Russia’s Vladimir Putin was also absent.Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman and Japan’s Fumio Kishida, among others, are attending.”It’s incumbent upon the Chinese government to explain” why its leader would or would not participate, Jon Finer, the U.S. deputy national security adviser, told reporters in Delhi.Biden said on Saturday: “It would be nice to have him here but the summit is going well.”Finer said there was speculation that China is “giving up on G20” in favour of groupings like BRICS, where it is dominant.BRICS includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and has agreed to add another six new members — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates – accelerating its push to reshuffle a world order it sees as outdated.Russia is being represented by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who had said he would block the final declaration unless it reflected Moscow’s position on Ukraine and other crises.Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions and sown economic turmoil across the world. Moscow denies committing atrocities during its conflict with Ukraine, which it terms a “special operation” to “demilitarize” its neighbour.A French diplomat involved in the talks said the communique was “very satisfactory”, and praised the language on the Ukraine war, especially the part that said nations should refrain from conquering territories by force.“Only one country does that, it’s Russia. That will help us build consensus for later,” the French diplomat said.In the absence of an agreement on the declaration, India would have had to issue a chair statement, which would mean that G20 for the first time in 20 years of summits would not have had a declaration. More