Secretary of State Marco Rubio cancelled the G20's traditional family photograph in Atlanta on Friday after several European ministers objected to being photographed with Russia's Sergey Lavrov and threatened to walk out of the photo session. Two U.S. officials said Rubio decided to cancel the photo after determining that the controversy would be a distraction. The State Department's agenda for the meeting did not include the family shot, and the ministers — Lavrov among them — went straight into the first session without posing for photographers.
A Western diplomat said a third of the participants objected, including Australia and Canada. Germany's Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told reporters: "In no case will there be a family photo with European partners and Mr. Lavrov together because … there is no normalcy with Russia." Wadephul added that "we must exchange the controversies at the table here," but "we also must not send falsely optimistic signals."
Poland's Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski backed the American decision, calling the cancellation "the right decision" and telling media in Atlanta: "I am not the only one who does not want to be photographed with Lavrov." Russia has not commented on the cancellation itself — Moscow's public complaints about the meeting concerned visas for its delegation, which Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said were resolved only at the last minute.
Rubio opened the talks by looking past the row, saying he hoped for "a productive meeting." "We are in a critical moment — I would call it a moment of choosing, and I would say not just for my country, the United States of America, but frankly, for the world," he said, warning that the world faces "a series of interconnected economic and geopolitical crises," many posing "severe threats to essential foundations of the global economic order."
The scrapped photograph is a small ceremony with a large meaning: the fights on the Atlanta table — the Russia-Ukraine war, the war with Iran, U.S. tariffs and the South China Sea — are the same disputes that have driven spikes in the global cost of fuel and uncertainty about trade, costs that land on ordinary households. The Atlanta meeting sets the stage for the G20 leaders' summit President Trump will host in Miami in December.
Russia's foreign minister is on American soil. Sergey Lavrov's government aircraft landed in Atlanta on Friday after a flight from Moscow that took 20 hours and 10 minutes, routing around countries that have closed their airspace to Russia, Russian state media reported. He is there to lead Russia's delegation at the two-day G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting, opened Friday by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who chairs it under the United States' presidency of the group. Lavrov, who remains under Western sanctions over Russia's war in Ukraine, is the most senior Russian official to sit at a U.S.-hosted meeting of the world's largest economies in this period — four days before the U.S. midterm elections.
The encounter everyone is watching is the one between Lavrov and Rubio. No formal one-on-one meeting had been announced as the meeting opened, and neither side has confirmed one; what is certain is that they will sit at the same table through two days of sessions, with bilateral meetings and a Quad session running on the sidelines. Moscow has made no secret of what Lavrov came to say: the Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday that he would use his speech to argue against international sanctions and trade restrictions and to promote a multipolar world order. His spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said the delegation's visas and arrangements were resolved only "at the last minute," and suggested "not everyone in Washington is happy" about his participation.
Washington's stated agenda is narrower than the wars hanging over the room. The State Department says the talks will work on the geopolitical crises contributing to global economic shocks — threats to freedom of navigation, energy and food security, and supply chains — and that the discussions will set the stage for President Donald Trump's G20 Leaders' Summit. A State Department official told reporters on Thursday that the meeting would focus on energy and supply chain challenges, which Washington treats as crucial to the development of artificial intelligence, and Rubio has championed the Pax Silica initiative, aimed at countries concerned about China's dominance of rare earths and other critical minerals. China sent a deputy, Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, instead of Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
The absences say as much as the attendance. South Africa was not invited, and neither was Ukraine — Washington limited invitations to formal G20 members. No joint declaration is expected: the rifts over Ukraine and the Middle East are too deep, and the United States is expected to publish a chair's summary in its own name instead. Even the traditional family photograph has become a fight — there will be no standard group photo this year, British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has asked for a separate photograph of allied nations so he does not appear alongside the Russian officials, and European diplomats have discussed holding two pictures, one with Lavrov and one without. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas arrived promising to call for increased support for Ukraine and progress on holding Russia accountable.
Ukraine is the business underneath everything else. President Trump is pushing hard for a ceasefire in Russia's war, and the United States, Russia and Ukraine are expected to hold technical-level trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi next month. Washington is also seeking Moscow's cooperation on reining in fuel prices, a live issue for American households and a key campaign question in Tuesday's midterms, and Trump's recent decisions on Russia — including a deal to buy diesel and the waiving of some sanctions — were already weighing on the allies before Lavrov landed. For ordinary Americans, what happens in Atlanta is not abstract: energy prices, shipping costs and the price of goods moving through the world's contested sea lanes are all being argued over in that room.
What Atlanta decides, above all, is the road to Miami. The leaders' summit follows on December 14 to 15 on the Russian and Azerbaijani accounts — wire reporting from Atlanta puts it at December 14 to 16 — and President Vladimir Putin has been invited, although it remains unclear whether he will attend. If he does, it is the full test of Trump's settlement push: the Russian president on U.S. soil, at a Trump-hosted summit, while the war is still running.
What is not known yet is whether Lavrov's presence produces anything beyond the photograph that is not being taken. He made no public statement on arrival that any verified source carried, and no Rubio–Lavrov sit-down had been confirmed as the sessions began. The honest measure of this meeting is simple: two days of a sanctioned Russian foreign minister arguing his country's case in the American South, a host determined to keep the agenda on energy and supply chains, and a December summit in Miami where the same argument moves up to the presidents.
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