The head of Russian diplomacy, Sergey Lavrov, seems to have fallen out of favor with Vladimir Putin, following a failed exchange of remarks with the new American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio — an episode that led, according to the Russian press, to the cancellation of the much-anticipated summit between the Kremlin leader and Donald Trump.
The 76-year-old diplomat, who has been leading the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for over two decades, was noticeably absent from the meeting of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on November 5 — a significant meeting, usually attended by the hard core of power in Moscow. During the meeting, Putin called for the resumption of discussions on possible nuclear tests, the first since 1990.
Sources quoted by Kommersant explained Lavrov’s absence as being “agreed upon,” but the detail did not go unnoticed: he was the only permanent member of the Council who missed the meeting.
The blows did not stop there. The Kremlin announced that Lavrov will no longer lead Russia’s delegation to this year’s G20 summit. Instead, Putin appointed Maxim Oreshkin, the deputy head of the presidential administration. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed the decision, emphasizing that it was made “personally” by the president.
Putin himself will also avoid this time the G20 summit, scheduled in South Africa — a country signatory to the Rome Statute, obliged to implement the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in his name. It is already a pattern: the Russian leader also missed the 2025 BRICS meeting in Brazil, as well as the 2022 G20 summit in Bali, sending Lavrov to manage Russia’s image abroad.
According to the Russian press, Lavrov’s influence began to decline on October 21, after a tense phone conversation with Marco Rubio. The two were supposed to set the details of the Putin-Trump meeting, planned in Budapest. However, shortly after the discussion, Rubio reportedly advised Trump to cancel the meeting. Consequently, Washington imposed a new package of sanctions against “Rosneft” and “Lukoil” — the first American punitive measures since Trump’s return to the White House.
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