The traditional “family photo” to open the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting has been abruptly cancelled in the US after a host of nations – including Australia and the UK – refused to appear beside the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, pulled the plug after several European officials, the UK and Australia made it known they would boycott or walk out of the snapshot that often kicks off such international gatherings.
Rubio still opened the talks in Atlanta with an appeal for unity on the issues that threaten international security and trade.
“We are in a critical moment,” Rubio told his colleagues. “We are facing a series of interconnected economic and geopolitical crises.”
About one-third of countries at the talks made it known they would not appear beside any Russian representatives.
European Union nations had made clear they would boycott any photo with the Russians. “In no case will there be a family photo with European partners and Mr Lavrov together because … there is no normality with Russia,” Germany’s foreign affairs minister, Johann Wadephul, warned ahead of Friday’s session.
The UK foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, promised similar. “We do not engage in that way with the Russians and have not for a number of years,” he said.
During the meeting’s opening session, Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in front of Lavrov and said Russia’s illegal war had affected international markets and worsened global food security.
A spokesperson for Wong said Australia supported the US decision to cancel the group photo. “Australia has been clear and consistent: we will not normalise Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine.
“Our focus at the G20 remains on the important work before us and addressing the challenges facing the global economy.”
The schism in Atlanta is yet further evidence of the rupture caused by the Trump administration’s attempt to reintegrate Russia and its isolated president, Vladimir Putin, into the international community despite Putin’s ongoing war against Ukraine.
Diplomats who attended the opening session described it as cordial but said Russia’s position on Ukraine is unyielding – as is its opposition to Poland’s membership in the G20.
Those disagreements, which also include the Trump administration’s not inviting G20 member South Africa over the objections of others, will probably prevent the foreign ministers from producing a joint communique when the meetings wrap up on Saturday, participants said.
That did not surprise the Polish deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, representing his country at its first time as a guest at a G20 meeting.
“We have wars going on and we have participants in those wars around the table, so it’s very difficult to agree a common line,” he told reporters.
Several participants, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the closed-door talks, said all had agreed to try to overcome their differences despite the long odds and to work to make next month’s G20 leaders’ summit hosted by the president, Donald Trump, in Florida a success.
Ukraine, which is not a G20 member but was invited to attend previous meetings, was not invited this year, with US officials saying it was a deliberate choice to include only formal members of the group. Poland, not a member, is seeking formal membership with US support.
But missing from the invitation list was South Africa, a G20 founding member and the only African country in the group. South Africa is embroiled in several bitter disputes with the Trump administration, and when it chaired the G20 last year, top US officials, including Trump and Rubio, shunned the meetings it hosted.
“We have consistently maintained that our nonparticipation is not voluntary,” Phindile Kunene, a spokesperson for the South African international relations minister, Ronald Lamola, said.
