“It isn’t possible (to reach) a final statement,” finance minister Fernando Haddad told a news conference in Sao Paulo at the close of the two-day meeting, which was overshadowed by divisions among the group over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

“The impasse, as usual, is over the ongoing conflicts,” said Haddad, without explicitly mentioning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“We had nurtured the hope that more sensitive geopolitical issues could be debated exclusively” by the group’s foreign ministers, who held a meeting in Rio de Janeiro last week that was also marred by deep divisions — and likewise failed to produce a joint statement.

Haddad said that on financial issues, the group — which represents 80% of the global economy — was unified.

“But since the meeting last week in Rio de Janeiro didn’t reach a joint statement, that ended up contaminating the establishment of consensus” at what Brazil had hoped would be a purely economic policy meeting, he said.

German finance minister Christian Lindner had earlier said his country planned to insist on any final statement address Russia’s two-year-old war in Ukraine.

The war has split the G20, with Western countries condemning the invasion and pouring military and financial aid into Ukraine.

Russia — also a G20 member — has meanwhile courted support from fellow emerging powers such as Brazil, China and India.

The group is also divided over Gaza, with the US and Western allies reluctant to condemn Israel, even as non-Western members grow increasingly critical of a spiralling humanitarian crisis there.

“We can’t have business as usual at the G20 when there’s a war in Ukraine, Hamas terrorism and the humanitarian situation in Gaza,” Lindner told journalists.

“We oppose avoiding those issues. Even if we’re central bankers and finance ministers, we represent the values of our countries and must defend the international rules-based order.”