The U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Russian Foreign Minister Serguéi Lavrov had a brief and informal conversation during the welcome reception of the G20 ministerial meeting, held on Friday night at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, as reported by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the agency Russia Today (RT).
Rubio hurried to clarify the scope of the exchange in the final press conference of the meeting, held this Saturday. "We did not have a meeting with Lavrov; we spoke," said the head of U.S. diplomacy, who specified that among the topics discussed was the possibility of President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladímir Putin coinciding at the APEC summit next month.
"We briefly discussed the opportunity for our leaders to potentially interact at APEC next month," he specified.
The Russian foreign minister travels infrequently to NATO countries since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Rubio defended his invitation with a straightforward argument: "How can there be a negotiated agreement if you can't talk to both sides?"
That very presence triggered a diplomatic crisis from the first day. More than a third of the participants threatened not to appear alongside the Russian foreign minister in the traditional group photo, which led Rubio to cancel the snapshot to prevent the ceremonial incident from overshadowing the substantive talks.
The German Foreign Minister, Johann Wadephul, was unequivocal: "There is no normalcy with Russia." The Polish Radosław Sikorski, attending the G20 for the first time as a guest, supported the cancellation and acknowledged that he was not the only one refusing to pose for a photograph with Lavrov.
"We have ongoing wars and participants in those wars sitting at the table, so it is very difficult to agree on a common line," he noted.
Lavrov, for his part, downplayed the incident and expressed a positive assessment of the approach taken by the U.S. presidency.
"We support the principle of depoliticizing debates and focusing on the agreed issues for the G20 agenda," declared the Russian Foreign Minister to the press, as stated in the official statement of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, his stance on Ukraine did not budge an inch: "Russia will not allow a situation in which Ukraine poses a military threat to the legitimate security interests of the Russian Federation."
The two-day meeting concluded without a joint communiqué, replaced by a statement from the presidency that outlined priorities—energy and food security, freedom of navigation, supply chains—but did not include specific agreements, according to AP News.
The divisions over the war in Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East, and U.S. tariffs weighed heavily on each session.
Rubio was sober in assessing the outcome. "I won't pretend today that we are close to finding universally accepted solutions to these issues," he admitted.
On Ukraine, he was even more direct: "I don't know if a negotiated peace is attainable. That's what we're trying to find out, but I don't think anyone here would claim that we're on the verge of a negotiated agreement."
Simultaneously with the diplomatic tensions, the State Department approved on Friday a potential sale of 500 Patriot interceptors to Ukraine valued at approximately $2.1 billion, a sign that Washington continues to offer some support to Kiev despite the open channels with Moscow.
Atlanta was, ultimately, a general rehearsal for the G20 leaders' summit that Trump plans to host in December at the Trump National Doral complex in Miami, where the U.S. hopes that Putin will accept the invitation and come to negotiate. Rubio acknowledged this Saturday that he still does not know if the Russian president will attend.
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