“Irrespective of the participants at any G20 meeting.” That was how EU spokesman Olof Gill answered the question hanging over December’s summit in Miami: will Europe soften its message if Vladimir Putin walks into the room?
No, said Gill on Thursday. “Since 2022, the EU has consistently and forcefully used G20 meetings to condemn Russia’s full-scale invasion [of Ukraine] and to call for it to end,” he said. “What I can say today is that this approach, from the European Union perspective, will continue.” He also pointed to the war’s toll. Russia, he said, is escalating attacks on Ukrainian civilians, and July and August were the deadliest months since the war began.
An invitation from Washington
The United States holds this year’s G20 presidency, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the invitation to Putin after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the UN General Assembly in New York. “We think it’s an opportunity for him to engage not just with [US President Donald Trump], but with other world leaders,” Rubio said. “We hope that’s an invitation he’ll accept.”
The Kremlin first welcomed the offer, then backed off a day later. Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was premature to talk about it, and that no decision had been made. Moscow has said Putin would “consider” the invitation.
In Brussels the reaction was sharper. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called the invitation “very hard to hear,” pointing to a US Justice Department indictment unsealed on September 15 against five people linked to Russia’s FSB, three of them charged with conspiracy to commit hired murder. She said the officers get their orders from Putin.
Russia’s seat at the table
Gill noted that Russia remains a G20 member and has “the right to participate.” Ukraine’s allies on the forum, France, Germany, Italy, Britain and Canada, have pressed for its exclusion since the full-scale invasion of February 2022. That has not happened. The EU sits at the table in its own right, as do France, Germany and Italy.
Putin’s record gives little away. He skipped the 2022 summit on Bali and the 2023 summit in New Delhi, though both hosts formally invited him. He did not attend this year’s UN General Assembly either; Lavrov went instead. His last US trip was the August 15, 2025 meeting with Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, which was also his first visit to a Western country since the war began.
On the day Gill spoke, Russian strikes killed eight people across Ukraine. At least six agricultural workers died in Kharkiv region when a missile hit a warehouse, and at least two people were killed in Kyiv.
Sources
- EU to condemn war in Ukraine at G20 even if Putin attends
- EU Will Condemn Russia at G20 Even if Putin Attends, as Kallas Calls Trump's Invite ‘Very Hard to Hear’
