G20 photo call cancelled after European ministers refuse to be pictured with Lavrov, Rubio scraps group photograph at Atlanta summit, bilateral boycott coexists with Nordic calls to Putin

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The traditional group photograph at the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in Atlanta was cancelled after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio scrapped it, having concluded that European refusals to stand alongside Russia's Sergei Lavrov would be a distraction. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and other European counterparts had refused to be pictured with the Russian envoy; a UK government source told the Press Association: "We were not going to take part in any official picture with the Russian foreign minister."

Ukraine was not invited to this year's meeting at all — US officials said they had decided to include only formal G20 members, though Ukraine had attended previous gatherings. The exclusion of the war's victim from the table, combined with a photograph boycott staged to demonstrate solidarity with that same victim, marks the summit's central tension: performative distancing from Moscow while the actual negotiating channels run elsewhere. Finland and Norway have been calling Putin directly, and Washington invited Lavrov in the first place after President Trump waived sanctions on the Kremlin and called for Volodymyr Zelensky's replacement.

Dame Emily Thornberry, chairwoman of the foreign affairs committee, framed the calculation on BBC Radio 4: countries may reasonably want to speak to officials from Moscow, but "you wouldn't want to have your photo taken at the moment with the Russians" — and there is "no point in meeting them just to smile sweetly and pretend everything's OK because everything is not OK." The UK maintains a policy of no direct bilateral engagement with Russian ministers since the invasion, which did not prevent the meeting itself from proceeding; it prevented only the image of it.

The agenda beyond Ukraine includes the US-Israeli war with Iran and its disruption of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. The Atlanta meeting sets the stage for a G20 leaders' summit Trump will host at his Miami golf club in December, to which Putin has been invited; whether he attends is unclear.

The ministers all stayed in the room with Lavrov. Only the camera was kept out.