European delegates walk out on Russian finance minister at IMF summit

JUST IN: European delegates walked out of an IMF steering committee meeting when Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov began addressing the group in Russian, according to three sources.

Nearly a dozen delegates walked out on Russia's finance minister at the IMF this morning.

It happened in Bangkok, at the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank. Anton Siluanov started addressing the steering committee in Russian, and chairs started scraping. Three sources confirmed it to Reuters. Delegates from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were among those who left. The Nordics and the Baltics, which is to say the countries closest to Russia's border, didn't wait to hear him out.

This isn't new theatre, it's a running show. Since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, this committee hasn't managed a single consensus statement, and this week brought fresh tensions between Washington and Kyiv on top of it. The body that's supposed to steer the global financial system can't even agree to sit in the same room.

Five years into this war, the walkout is the statement.

This is Liu Yang, reporting for HIT.