(AFP) – An invitation to the December G20 summit in the United States will be sent to Russia as a member of the organization, a senior US official said Thursday. Such an invitation would come as the Trump administration pushes to further ease the international isolation Russia brought on itself by invading Ukraine in 2022. “All G20 members will be invited to attend ministerial meetings and the leaders’ summit,” a senior Trump administration official said in a statement.
The Kremlin said earlier in the day that Russian President Vladimir Putin had not yet decided if he would attend. “No such decisions have been made yet,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in Moscow. Putin has not participated in a meeting of the world’s top economies since 2019, first because of the coronavirus pandemic and then due to the war in Ukraine.
Russia was invited at “the highest level” for the December 14-15 summit in Miami, the state news agency RIA Novosti quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin as saying. After sending troops into neighboring Ukraine in 2022, Russia was slapped with numerous international sanctions and faced diplomatic isolation from the West.
In 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin over the war, limiting the Russian leader’s travel. The United States is not a member of the ICC, and Putin traveled to Alaska last August for a summit with US President Donald Trump. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has sought to revive long-frozen relations with Russia in a bid to end the war in Ukraine. Initially promising to end the war in 24 hours, Trump’s attempts so far have delivered few tangible results, even as Moscow and Kyiv met multiple times for talks.
© 2024 AFP
