Next is the summit: The Kremlin is not yet considering Putin's visit to the G20 in the United States

Vladimir Putin's visit to the G20 summit in the United States is not being worked out yet, Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Izvestia. Russia has been invited to participate at the highest level, and Donald Trump has publicly noted that Putin's presence would be beneficial. Nevertheless, the Kremlin has taken a wait-and-see attitude. Experts believe that a possible meeting between Putin and Trump in Miami could give an additional impetus to the dialogue between Russia and the United States. At the same time, the Russian president's willingness to travel largely depends on real progress on key tracks, including the crisis in Ukraine. There are also risks of excessive politicization and "Ukrainization" of the agenda by the European members of the G20, including Poland.

Russia's participation in the G20 summit

The White House is actively preparing for the G20 summit, which is scheduled to take place in Miami in mid-December. At the end of April, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin confirmed that Russia had been invited to participate in the event at the "highest" level. US President Donald Trump said that Vladimir Putin's presence "could be very useful." The Kremlin had previously allowed the Russian leader to visit the United States. At the same time, a visit to the United States is not being worked out at the moment, a spokesman for the Russian president told Izvestia.

"Not yet," Dmitry Peskov told Izvestia, answering a question about whether a visit to Miami for the G20 is currently being considered.

The last time Vladimir Putin personally participated in the G20 summit was in June 2019 in Osaka, Japan, where, by the way, he held talks with Trump. After that, the Russian leader joined the G20 leaders' meetings remotely. Since 2022, other officials have been going to face-to—face meetings of the heads of state - either Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov or Deputy head of the presidential administration Maxim Oreshkin.

Since the beginning of the CBO, the United States has completely suspended the entire dialogue at the highest level. The situation changed after Donald Trump returned to the White House. In February last year, the leaders of the United States and Russia held a telephone conversation, and a few months later, a historic meeting took place in Alaska in Anchorage. The parties even discussed the possibility of holding a second conversation in Budapest, but the initiative remained unfulfilled.

The Miami summit can become a convenient venue for a new meeting of the presidents. It could give a powerful impetus to the development of dialogue between Russia and the United States, Dmitry Suslov, Deputy director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, told Izvestia. One of the most pressing issues remains the resolution of the Ukrainian crisis.

The G20 summit will be held in another six months, and by that time there will probably be progress on the roadmap for resolving the conflict in Ukraine, said Alexander Rahr, a German political scientist and chairman of the Eurasian Society.

— Even the Europeans will deign to appoint a representative for negotiations with Moscow by that time. For Trump, the success of peacekeeping in America would be worth its weight in gold," he told Izvestia.

It is possible that in the event of a visit, Putin could hold meetings with the leaders of European countries. For example, separate negotiations could take place with French President Emmanuel Macron. He maintained the practice of making phone calls to the Kremlin longer than other Western leaders, so if the situation changed, Paris could request a dialogue.

What will the merchants say: Russia is among the three G20 countries with the highest trade revenues.

What exactly made it possible to achieve such results and what can it affect?

At the same time, Gleb Ignatiev, a lecturer at the Department of Politics and Management at the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences, notes that Trump may become the main beneficiary of Putin's arrival in Miami.

"He wants to continue to pretend to be a "great peacemaker" and considers such platforms places where it is possible to have a dialogue with Russia," he told Izvestia. — I doubt if anyone else in the G20 needs it. They still don't want to see Russia, they are still criticized in many European countries. Whether Russia itself needs this is also a big question.

Ignatiev notes that even hypothetical progress in relations with Washington or on the Ukrainian track is only a small part of the overall context of the summit. The forum will bring together many world leaders, each of whom has accumulated their own grievances.

G20 Summit according to US rules

The G20 summit in Miami may become one of the most contentious in recent years. There are already disagreements with South Africa, which the United States accuses of discriminating against the rights of the white population. Washington took the demonstrative step of leaving South Africa uninvited and effectively replacing it with Poland. Trump explained the logic of this decision very simply: "Poland is an outstanding country."

By the way, Warsaw, in turn, has already managed to participate in the April meeting of G20 finance ministers in Washington, and as a full participant. Poland is one of the most ardent critics of Russia in the European Union and an active supporter of Ukraine. It is possible that at the Miami summit, Polish representatives will try to politicize the work of the G20.

Following the May talks in Beijing, Vladimir Putin noted that Russia and China intend to "closely coordinate positions" in the G20 in order to return the club to its original development goals. The main risk factor at the upcoming summit remains the desire of not only Poland, but also other European countries to shift the focus from the real problems of the global economy to confrontation with Russia. In this regard, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the BRICS ministerial meeting in New Delhi, explicitly warned that attempts to "Ukrainize" the G20 agenda would face consolidated opposition from non-Western participants.

At the same time, the United States may run into disagreements with its European allies. The fact is that Washington has radically shifted the focus, identifying three key areas of negotiations for itself: reducing regulatory pressure on business, developing affordable energy and artificial intelligence technology. Climate issues were not included in the agenda, unlike in previous presidencies, where they occupied a central place. According to Ivan Loshkarev, associate professor of Political Theory at MGIMO, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Washington relies on lifting restrictions and increasing oil and gas production in the energy sector: "Traditional supply chains are disrupted, and the price of energy remains uncomfortable for a number of developed countries." At the same time, the expert believes that the US leader will not allow harsh scandals at the summit.

Eighteen friends of Trump: the United States wanted to exclude South Africa from the G20

Pretoria was not invited to the G20 summit in Miami

— Trump is a president who is interested in showing a success story. I don't think that it is within the framework of this event that we should expect the greatest share of scandalous behavior and unexpected turns of speech, for which the current president is famous," he told Izvestia.

In many ways, the tone of the discussion and Washington's willingness to compromise, according to the expert, will depend on whether the situation in the Middle East will be resolved by December. A negative scenario will only strengthen the motivation of the United States to make the G20 summit a field of high-profile diplomatic triumph: the Trump administration simply does not need a failed meeting amid the smoldering crisis in Iran.

The intrigue surrounding one visit hides a larger plot: the crisis of the format itself. When the tone is set by a power that openly prefers two-way bargaining on the sidelines to a common table, and the list of participants is formed based on personal likes and dislikes, the forum ceases to be a place where real agreements are born, and becomes a continuation of the policy of one power. In these circumstances, it is more profitable for Moscow to wait until Washington is ready to talk one-on-one on the merits, rather than for the sake of a protocol photo.