US boycotts Russia's speech at joint World Bank-IMF forum

Officials representing the U.S., Germany, Japan, and other nations walked out of a joint World Bank-International Monetary Fund gathering on Friday when Russia's envoy started speaking, the second such action at high-profile gatherings in Washington this week, people familiar with the situation said, Report informs, quoting from Bloomberg.

The representatives were attending a meeting of the institution's development committee, according to the people, who declined to be identified because the gathering is private. The committee is a ministerial-level forum of the World Bank and the IMF for intergovernmental consensus-building on development issues and has 25 members, usually ministers of finance or development, according to its website.