Rubio defends Russian G20 presence despite criticism from allies

Eric Martin, Bloomberg News on Oct 31, 2026

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the U.S. decision to include Russia in this year’s Group of 20 meetings after criticism from the European Union and other allies, calling dialogue the only way to end the war in Ukraine.

Rubio spoke Saturday after a two-day meeting in Atlanta where the U.S. scrapped a traditional “family photo” meant to display unity among officials after some refused to take a picture with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The rejection by the EU, Germany, Poland, Canada and others created a powerful symbolic division between the U.S. — trying to coax Russia to talks — and allies who say they don’t want to reward President Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago. The war has killed more than 1 million people and wracked Europe like no conflict since World War II, while also disrupting shipping and raising energy and food prices around the world.

President Donald Trump thought it “important that Russia be a part of the G20 conversation,” Rubio told reporters in Atlanta. “What he doesn’t accept is the idea that somehow meeting with someone legitimizes them or makes you agree with everything that they do. It’s very simple: everybody wants there to be a deal that brings about an end to this war. How can you do a deal unless you’re meeting with them?” he said.

Rubio’s EU counterpart, Kaja Kallas, said that Putin’s potential attendance at the G20 leaders’ summit in Miami in December would risk regularizing Russia’s return to international forums while its war in Ukraine rages.

The U.S. invitation to the Russian leader “poses a lot of big questions,” Kallas said in an interview on Bloomberg This Weekend on Saturday. It risks “normalizing the war crimes being committed every day now” in Ukraine, she added.

Many leaders were unhappy with Trump’s announcement earlier this month that he would waive some tariffs and sanctions on Russia as part of a deal with Putin to let Russia export diesel to overseas markets.

Trump has invited Putin to the Florida G20 meeting, but the Kremlin has yet to say if he’ll accept. Rubio on Saturday floated the possibility that the pair could meet sooner, at next month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Shenzhen, China. Rubio said that beyond the war in Ukraine, it’s important for the U.S. to talk to Russia given the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile and the need to avoid conflict.

Including Moscow “gives Russia everything it wants on the world stage, without having to stop its war of aggression or cede anything in Ukraine,” said Torrey Taussig, a former Biden administration official who’s now at the Atlantic Council. “It sends the message that the U.S. wants to get back to business as usual with Russia and that the West didn’t have the staying power, which Putin has been banking on throughout the war.”

Lavrov, in comments to reporters in Atlanta, repeated Putin’s suggestion that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy travel to Moscow to meet him. That’s an idea that the Ukrainian leader has repeatedly rejected, saying it would be inappropriate to visit the aggressor, as well as citing continued attacks on Ukraine and safety and security risks.

Lavrov said that it makes sense for Russia and the U.S. to work together in areas where their interests align, while calling the treatment of Russia by European nations an “arrogant boycott.”

In one session, U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Lavrov, “If you had the courage to tell the truth and to do what is right, you would tell Putin that he is not winning this war and will not win,” according to a transcript from the British embassy.

Rubio said that he didn’t have formal bilateral talks with Lavrov in Atlanta. Photos posted to social media from a reception that Rubio hosted on Friday night at the Georgia Aquarium showed that Rubio spoke with Lavrov, but that the Russian otherwise largely was alone and kept to himself in the ballroom framed by tanks filled with beluga whales and manta rays.

Video from the plenary sessions showed him speaking with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, but not Western European officials. Lavrov also met with Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi to discuss issues including a Japanese journalist detained in Russia.

“Russia has isolated itself, and that was visibly present at the reception last night,” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said in a phone interview on Saturday. “The decisions that his country has repeatedly taken are completely contrary to international law. They are inhumane, and the failure of Russia, including Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov, to acknowledge wrongdoing and the devastation to human life that they are repeatedly causing is remarkable and reprehensible.”

“The fact that he comes here to trot out tired old Kremlin talking points is beneath the conversation that we have here at the G20, where countries come together to collaborate to address issues of global concern and conflict,” she said.