Muhammad Al-Jadaan, who chairs the International Monetary Fund's steering committee, took note of the walkout by roughly half of the delegates during Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov's address at Saturday's gathering, yet pointed to the eventual adoption of the chair's statement as the outcome that mattered. Al-Jadaan said the delegation had arrived with a purpose and left having fulfilled it.
According to minutes from the session, every member had put their name to the text — a point the committee chair raised with a broadcaster when arguing that the outcome carried binding force.
At a closing news conference wrapping up a week of IMF and World Bank annual meetings that drew upwards of 18,000 attendees to Bangkok, Al-Jadaan described the global economy as showing resilience against an array of persistent pressures — among them armed conflicts, threats to energy and food supplies, elevated public debt, and uncertainties tied to rapid advances in artificial intelligence. He urged finance officials to remain vigilant rather than self-satisfied. The chair's statement added that intensifying conflicts and trade tensions carried the potential to disrupt vital trade routes, push commodity prices higher including for refined energy products, and deepen vulnerabilities in energy and food supply chains.
Al-Jadaan told reporters that rebuilding fiscal buffers without leaving behind vulnerable groups or scaling back growth-oriented spending formed the core of his message, alongside a call for central banks to operate free from political interference and for economies to lean on private-sector activity as the engine of expansion. His remarks also pointed to international cooperation as a tool for bringing excessive global imbalances and trade tensions under control.
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva described the gatherings as productive while noting that member nations were displaying a palpable unease over growing divergence across their economies. Her remarks noted that lower-income nations outside the artificial intelligence supply chain expressed concern about being left at a disadvantage, and that despite recurring global disruptions and deepening geopolitical divisions, a genuine appetite for multilateral dialogue and cooperative engagement persists — a point she underlined with emphasis.
Those words came shortly after a portion of IMFC delegates vacated their seats while Siluanov delivered his address to the gathering in Russian. Speaking at a banking event held on the sidelines of the meetings, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel noted that roughly half of all delegates had left the room in protest — a gesture he framed as sending a collective signal to Russia, describing it as an expression of shared values and solidarity.
Nagel put forward the position that resolving the Ukraine conflict — which he described as an act of aggression without provocation — would benefit the world economy, and he noted personal satisfaction at watching a number of delegates leave the plenary hall in protest. The Bank of England later confirmed that its Governor, Andrew Bailey, was among those who departed, an episode that unfolded in the period before Britain was due to take on the G20 presidency the following year.
The war launched by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022 has strained the IMFC's ability to produce agreed-upon communiqués in the period that followed. Disagreements among the parties resurfaced during the week's talks, with relations between the United States and Ukraine showing renewed strain.
According to those briefed on the session, delegates from Britain, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and several other nations walked out while Siluanov was at the podium. One attendee stated that the conflict in Ukraine carries an existential dimension for European countries. A European diplomat indicated that restoring diplomatic ties with Russia remains off the table.
On Thursday, Germany pushed back against moves to bring Russia back into multilateral financial discussions, with Siluanov's presence at a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors drawing particular attention. The gathering came roughly five weeks after Siluanov had attended a G20 session in person in Asheville, North Carolina — a meeting hosted by the United States that marked his first direct participation at that forum since the onset of Russia's military operations in Ukraine.
Treasury Undersecretary Erin Browne told reporters that the United States — holding the G20 presidency at the time — backed Russia's participation in the meetings, even as European nations raised objections. She argued that resolving conflicts requires parties to remain in direct communication with one another, and that no path to resolution exists when dialogue is absent altogether. Ukraine's finance minister joined the sessions remotely, citing domestic budget matters as the reason for not attending in person.
Speaking at a Friday EU summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy voiced reservations about the ceasefire terms that US President Donald Trump had negotiated with Russia, while backing a wider role for European nations in the ongoing peace talks. European leaders moved to express solidarity with Zelenskiy after Trump, on Friday, chose not to enforce a new congressional mandate requiring stiff penalties against Russia — a decision that came alongside his characterisation of Ukrainian drone and missile attacks on Russian oil infrastructure as a "disgrace."
