G20 leaders decried the use of force in Ukraine for territorial gain in a summit statement on Saturday, without naming Russia. Referencing the “war in Ukraine”, the document said that “all states” should “refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition against the territorial integrity and sovereignty or political independence of any state”. There was no explicit reference to Russia, unlike in a G20 statement in Bali last year that cited a UN resolution condemning “in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine”. Nonetheless, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan welcomed the phrasing. “From our perspective, it does a very good job,” he told reporters. It reinforced the principles that states could not use force for territorial gain, that using nuclear weapons was “inadmissible”, and that “a just peace must be based on the principles of the UN Charter, including the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity”, he said. “Attacks on civilian infrastructure, including grid infrastructure, must halt,” Sullivan added. G20 summit host India has walked a diplomatic tightrope over the Ukraine war. It has balanced its traditional alliance with Moscow — the provider of most of its arms imports, and now a source of cut-price oil — with its membership in the Quad grouping alongside the United States, Japan and Australia. Earlier, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his opening address to the G20 summit with his country nameplate labelled “Bharat” — an ancient Sanskrit word — in the biggest signal yet of a potential official change. The gesture came days after invitations to the summit dinner were sent out in the name of the “President of Bharat”, prompting rumours that official usage of the country’s English name would be scrapped. Modi himself typically refers to India as “Bharat”, a word steeped in Hindu religious symbolism and dating back to scripture: in the Mahabharata, King Dushyant and Shakuntala’s son was named “Bharat” and the kingdom he inherited came to be known as “Bharatvarsha”. Hindus are the overwhelming majority of India’s 1.4 billion population but many religious minorities, in particular its more than 200 million Muslims, fear that Modi wants to remould India as a Hindu nation. Zakia Soman, the co-founder of Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, a rights group, said the potential name change reeked of yet more “polarising politics” by the government. “It takes away from the real issues and real problems faced by the people of the country,” she told AFP. “We’ve always been India and ‘Bharat’ both. By insisting only on ‘Bharat’, they are trivialising our heritage and legacy.” India and Bharat are both official names for the country under its constitution, in which Article 1 opens with the phrase: “India, that is Bharat.” But members of Modi’s Hindu nationalist party have campaigned against using the better-known moniker, which has roots in Western antiquity and was imposed during the British conquest. Modi’s government has worked to remove any lingering symbols of British rule — and Muslim heritage — from the country’s urban landscape, political institutions and history books since coming to power in 2014. The northern city of Allahabad — named by Mughal ruler Akbar centuries ago — was changed to the Sanskrit word Prayagraj in 2018. Earlier this week, foreign minister S. Jaishankar seemed to support the idea of shedding the name India. “Bharat” he said, had “a meaning and understanding and a connotation that comes with it and that is reflected in our Constitution as well,” the Hindustan Times quoted him as saying on Wednesday.