The Kremlin on Monday said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s participation in the G20 summit in New Delhi in September cannot be ruled out while maintaining that a final decision is yet to be taken.

Speculation has been rife since last week of Putin attending the New Delhi summit after the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) that he hosts in Vladivostok annually was postponed by a week from the earlier announced schedule of September 5-8.

Announcing the change last week, the Russian stateowned news agency Tass quoted Anton Kobyakov, adviser to the President and executive secretary of the EEF organising committee, as saying: “The decision to change the dates of the Eastern Economic Forum is linked to the schedule of international events.”

With the G20 summit to be held in New Delhi on September 9 and 10, the change of the dates of the eighth EEF was interpreted as an effort to clear up Putin’s calendar to allow him to travel to India for the meeting.

Asked whether Putin would attend the Delhi summit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “It can’t be ruled out. Russia continues to participate fully in the G20 framework. It intends to continue to do that. But no decision has been made yet.”

The first two ministerials — finance ministers and foreign ministers — of this G20 have already run into rough weather over the Ukraine war as Russia and China opposed bringing political issues to the table of the grouping that has traditionally dealt exclusively with economics and development.

India will have a tightrope walk ahead should Putin decide to come as representatives of the G7 countries in particular have taken pains to not be seen in the same frame as their Russian counterparts at the two ministerials.