Lavrov sidelined after botched US negotiations undermine Putin’s strategy - Media
Photo: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (Getty Images)
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has fallen out of favor after the collapse of a planned summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, according to The Moscow Times.
Lavrov appears to have fallen out of favor with the Kremlin chief after an unsuccessful conversation with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, which triggered the collapse of the planned Putin–Trump summit.
Russian media reported that the 76-year-old Lavrov, who has headed the Foreign Ministry for more than 20 years, did not appear at a key meeting of Russia’s Security Council that Putin held on November 5.
At the meeting with the permanent members of the Security Council — a group that includes Lavrov — Putin instructed officials to work on proposals to resume nuclear tests, which Russia last conducted in 1990.
Lavrov was "absent by agreement" from the meeting, and notably, he was the only permanent member of the Security Council who skipped the important session.
At the same time, Lavrov has lost his status as head of the Russian delegation to the G20 summit.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that this year the delegation will be led by Deputy Chief of Staff Maksim Oreshkin. According to him, the decision to appoint Oreshkin was made by Putin.
The president himself once again refused to travel to the G20 summit, which this year will take place in South Africa — a country that has signed the Rome Statute and is obliged to arrest Putin under the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.
Notably, after the failed conversation with Rubio, Lavrov once again began speaking about the "Nazi regime" in Kyiv and demanded that the "root causes of the conflict" be addressed.
Collapsed Trump–Putin meeting
On October 16, Trump and Putin announced after a phone call that they intended to hold an in-person meeting within two weeks.
Budapest was chosen as the potential summit location.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov were supposed to coordinate preparations for the talks. However, Trump soon canceled the meeting.
According to media reports, the reason was that Russia did not soften its maximalist demands regarding the conditions for ending the war in Ukraine. Trump publicly stated that he was "not going to waste his time."
Soon afterward, in the early hours of October 23, the US imposed new sanctions on Russia’s largest oil companies — Rosneft and Lukoil. At the same time, the US Department of the Treasury urged Moscow to immediately agree to a ceasefire.
Notably, President Trump said he was ready for a new meeting with Putin, but only if a real agreement on ending the war in Ukraine could be reached. The Kremlin, meanwhile, confirmed that Putin was supposedly ready for talks.
