RIO DE JANEIRO, November 19. /TASS/. Countries of the collective West did not want to acknowledge the gravity of what is going on in the Middle East in the G20 summit’s declaration, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

"Of course, the West did not want to discuss this text, but they understood full well that no section about conflicts could be made without addressing this issue," he told a news conference after taking part in the Group of Twenty summit.

According to the top Russian diplomat, the declaration contains a paragraph detailing what is going on in Gaza, highlighting the tragic, catastrophic situation Gaza’s population is in. The minister noted that "there were attempts to place this paragraph after the one on Ukraine." "But here, we must stress that we didn’t even have to say that such manipulation was inadmissible because countries of the Global south categorically refused to diminish the significance of the Gaza tragedy, which the G20 should prioritize," Lavrov said.

According to Lavrov, the "Palestinian" paragraph and the "Ukrainian" one, which follows it, are preceded by a general paragraph about how to settle conflicts in general. "It clearly states the categorical inadmissibility of casualties among civilians and strikes on civilian infrastructure," Lavrov emphasized. He recalled that the number of civilian casualties in one year of Israel’s operation in Palestine stands at around 45,000. "This is about twice as many as the number of civilian casualties on both sides over the ten years of the conflict in Ukraine after the state coup. This fact alone shows what is going on in Palestine and how to counter this," he added.