Rio de Janeiro () – A major US decision to allow Ukraine to fire long-range missiles deeper into Russian territory has complicated a possible Western diplomatic thaw with Russia as dozens of world leaders meet this week.
Sunday’s decision was seen by many Western leaders as a way to position Ukraine for success in the face of a change in American leadership, with the incoming president skeptical of continued U.S. aid.
But it also complicated the diplomatic dance that leaders attending the G20 summit must engage in as they navigate the bloc’s complex geopolitical dynamics.
Russia “will perceive long-range missile launches guided by American military experts as a qualitatively new phase of the war by the West,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared during a press conference at the summit. according to the Russian state media TASS.
Lavrov attended the G20 in place of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who faced questions about whether he could be detained for war crimes on international soil. Days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked Brazilian authorities to arrest Putin, the Russian leader said he would not attend the summit so as not to disrupt it.
Amid the shift in strategy, which Biden had deliberated on for months, the president and his team stayed away from Lavrov on the ground in Rio.
When Biden missed a photo with other leaders on Monday, speculation was rife that he was trying to avoid a photo with Lavrov. The White House denied it, citing a logistical setback.
Still, neither Biden nor his delegation held talks with Lavrov or his team, U.S. officials said. And Biden and Lavrov’s fluid schedules meant they were not photographed together with other world leaders.
But some Western allies, sensing a sea change in the U.S. approach to the conflict once Donald Trump takes office, appear to be weighing a shift in their own stance toward Moscow.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke by phone with Putin the week before the summit. In his statements at the end of the summit, Lavrov also called the German government’s refusal to send Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine a “responsible stance,” TASS reported.
And in Rio, French President Emmanuel Macron could be seen shaking hands with Lavrov, standing in the row behind him during a “family photo” of attendees.
In Rio, Trump’s impending presidency overshadowed nearly all discussions of the Ukraine conflict. Leaders here are well aware of Trump’s views on the war, but are less sure how they will manifest themselves in policy once he takes office.
It is unclear, for example, whether Trump would uphold Biden’s decision on allowing Ukraine long-range capability, a step NATO leaders had been encouraging for months. Trump’s next national security adviser, Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, questioned the decision in an interview Monday.
“It’s another step on the escalation ladder and no one knows where this is going,” he said on Fox News, adding that he had not been notified by the outgoing administration about the policy change.
Officials in Rio declined to say whether Biden had raised the missile issue with Trump during their two-hour meeting in the Oval Office last week.
“The two presidents discussed a wide range of issues. We have been very careful not to read that conversation in detail. Certainly, the conversation included all the big issues of geopolitical importance, but I’m not going to go into the details of it,” said Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer.
Western officials had hoped for a strong statement denouncing the Russian invasion at the end of the summit. In particular, European diplomats made a last-minute effort to tighten language following Russia’s massive drone and missile attack on Sunday, according to people familiar with the talks.
Ultimately, the effort was abandoned when it appeared that other countries did not agree. The language of the leaders’ final statement was softened from previous years, including extensive references to “human suffering” and the “added negative impacts of war” without explicit condemnation of Russia.
The Ukraine war generated only one paragraph in the final document, compared to several that were included in the final document prepared by the G20 last year in New Delhi, which itself was watered down from the previous year.
As the summit concluded, it was evident that tensions between the US and Russia were only increasing. Russia announced as the second day of the summit began that it would update its nuclear doctrine to consider aggression by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation of a nuclear country, a joint attack against Moscow.
US officials were not surprised to learn that Moscow had updated its nuclear doctrine following Biden’s decision on long-range missiles.
“Russia had been signaling its intention to update its doctrine for several weeks,” a US official said in response to the doctrine update, adding that so far the US has not noted any updates to Russia’s nuclear posture and therefore Therefore he sees no reason to change the US position.
“This is more of the same irresponsible rhetoric from Russia that we have seen over the past two years,” the official said.
In his closing remarks, Lavrov sought to downplay the change in the fine print of his nuclear posture, instead placing the blame on the West.
“The update of military doctrine does not add anything that is different… from US doctrine or documents on what to do with nuclear weapons,” according to Russian state media.
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