On November 25, 2025, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion dedicated to the results of the G20 Summit in Johannesburg. Moderator Ivan Timofeev noted a sense of routinisation of the G20 structure and pointed out that this year’s summit was characterised by a businesslike tone and a return to concrete, pressing issues, rather than a loud, politicised agenda.
According to Dmitry Birichevsky, Director of the Department of Economic Cooperation at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the G20 demonstrated effectiveness and solidarity at its inception, slowing the global economic crisis of 2008. Following this, it was decided to elevate the process from the level of finance ministers to the level of heads of state. At the same time, multipolarity in global politics was strengthened. Each presidency sought to prove itself and fill its year with important themes. This led to a certain “oversaturation” of the G20 content. A huge number of working groups have emerged, and numerous ministerial conferences are being held. However, the G20 is not an organisation, but a forum, and it lacks mechanisms to summarise these activities. Birichevsky emphasised that this was the first G20 summit held in Africa, and the organisers wanted to draw the world’s attention to the problems of the African continent, which significantly influenced the summit’s agenda and its course. In particular, emphasis was placed on the topic of mineral resources and ensuring that the profits from them go to producing countries, contrary to lingering colonial practices. Another important issue was the energy agenda, related to energy security and access to energy. “The G20 is not the UN or a global government,” the diplomat concluded. It merely signals to the global community the consensus of countries representing the global majority.
Alexander Korolev, Deputy Director of the Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics, called the routinisation of the G20 “an absolutely normal, natural state,” as the G20 remains, at its core, a summit—an environment for developing joint decisions, not for their implementation. He added that, given the current fragmentation, the very adoption of a full-fledged joint declaration appears to be a kind of “interim success”. The paradox, according to Korolev, is that despite the high level of politicisation common to international forums these days, this year’s final G20 declaration was characterised by extreme economisation, including in terms of content. Among other things, it relegates the Ukraine issue to the background. Korolev also noted similarities between the final document and the declarations of the BRICS and SCO summits. This concerns issues of underrepresentation of developing countries, consolidation of the Global South, and reform of Western-centric global institutions, as well as energy and food security.
John Gong, Vice President for Research and Strategic Studies at the University of International Business and Economics, noted that the G20 has evolved from a platform for coordinating policy to overcome crises into a platform for advancing interests and presenting an agenda. Structurally, he believes, it represents something intermediate between the G7, which brings together developed countries, and the associations of developing countries. Thus, it has become a place “where developed and developing countries can sit down together and talk about something,” so that the problems of the Global South are not solely discussed in the forums of the Global South, Gong believes. At the same time, the G20 agenda usually develops largely under the influence of the host country, and next year, when the summit is held in the United States, it will be very different. However, in recent years, driven by the rise of the Global South, the G20 as a whole has begun to shift toward the developing world, as reflected in the declarations of its recent summits. In particular, the researcher noted the fact that the final declaration in Johannesburg was adopted without the participation of the United States was a significant event.
Orietta Moscatelli, a columnist with Italian Limes, a geopolitical magazine, presented the Italian perspective on the recent summit and the role of the G20 in general. She pointed out that, when it was first established, the G20 was a compromise, a bridge between the G7—the centre of gravity of the global economy—and the emerging economies pushed to the forefront by globalisation. Now we are in a transition. There is no longer a single centre of gravity, and this logic has lost its relevance. Against this backdrop, the G20 is not inherently a transformative instrument and focused on global interconnectedness, it is weakening and becoming more difficult to use as a platform for genuine political engagement. However, according to Moscatelli, it remains a space that Italy cannot afford to abandon. Among other things, Rome is using the summit to expand contacts with individual countries—the United States, China, Turkey, and the African states. “We participate in the G20 and will continue to participate in order to avoid strategic invisibility in a fragmented world. If the roundtable exists, absence from it is more damaging than presence,” Moscatelli said.
The Valdai Discussion Club was established in 2004. It is named after Lake Valdai, which is located close to Veliky Novgorod, where the Club’s first meeting took place.
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