The G20 summit started in India. Ukraine war is set to dominate Thursday's meeting of the world's top diplomats in New Delhi, with hosts India labouring to avoid the discord that ended its last G20 meeting.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that multilateral institutions had failed to meet the world's most pressing challenges while opening the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in New Delhi.

Thursday's meeting began with a minute of silence to honour the victims of the devastating February 6 earthquakes in Türkiye that killed over 45,000 people and another over 5,800 in neighbouring Syria.

"We must all acknowledge that multilateralism is in crisis today," Modi said in an opening recorded statement. 

"The experience of the last few years – financial crisis, climate change, pandemic, terrorism and wars - clearly shows that global governance has failed."

While India shares Western concerns about China, it is also a major buyer of Russian arms and has ramped up Russian oil imports.

India has not condemned the Ukraine war, although Modi told Putin last year that this was "not a time for war" in comments seen as a rebuke to Moscow.

Modi implored G20 delegates to make the meeting a success while tacitly acknowledging the bloc's deep divisions over the conflict.

"We should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way of those we can," he said.