The head of European diplomacy said today that the G20 has similar flaws to other geopolitical forums, after the group failed to reach an agreement due to tension over the war in Ukraine.

"The G20 has a specific role to play, but it is no longer an economic forum, it has become a geopolitical forum," said Josep Borrell, quoted by Lusa in New Delhi.

The EU High Representative noted that the G20 foreign ministers "encountered the same fault lines as in other forums", with tension between the United States and its Western allies and Russia over the war in Ukraine, as well as friction between Washington and Beijing.

"In today's world we have two trends (...) one is the competition between China and the US, which is going to be one of the great strategic forces of this century and is going to increase, and the second is that we don't live in a multilateral world but in a multipolar world," said Borrell, in a speech given at the Raisina Dialogue, India's annual geopolitical conference, jointly organized by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

Despite the lack of understanding between the G20 foreign ministers, which remained without consensus as was the case last week at the finance meeting in Bangalore, Borrell said there had been "a big improvement" compared to the leaders' summit in Bali last year.

"In Bali, [Russian Foreign Minister Serguey] Lavrov came, spoke and left. At least this time he stayed and listened," he said.

For his part, Lavrov considered that the G20, created as a forum for economic debate for the world's largest economies and emerging countries, had lost its purpose with debates on the Ukraine issue, under pressure from Washington to corner Russia.

"Nobody cared about anything except financial and macroeconomic policies," which is why "the G20 was formed," said the Russian foreign minister at a session of the Raisina Dialogue.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken blamed Russia and its actions in Ukraine for failures in multilateral systems, while Lavrov accused the West of preventing the adoption of a joint statement.

China, meanwhile, accused the US of "fanning the flames of war" by sending weapons to Ukraine.

India, which holds the rotating presidency of the group and is hosting the event, has sought to make key issues such as the food and energy crisis, which is particularly affecting developing nations, the focus of the debates.