Sherpa Meeting I was held in Washington, DC on December 15-16, 2025.
For the first time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia sat at the G20 table in person this past week, when Finance Minister Anton Siluanov appeared at a ministerial meeting hosted by the United States. The moment, engineered by the Trump administration, has reignited a debate that has simmered since the war began: should Russia be welcomed back into the world's premier forum for economic cooperation, or does its presence there reward aggression?
Since 2022, Moscow had largely been sidelined from G20 leader-level engagement, with Vladimir Putin skipping the 2023 New Delhi and 2024 Rio de Janeiro summits and sending Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in his place. That pattern shifted this year. The United States, as 2026 host, has planned a leaders' summit for December 14–15 in Miami, and the White House confirmed plans to extend an invitation to Putin himself, even as officials expressed doubt he would attend given an outstanding International Criminal Court arrest warrant. Russia's own Foreign Ministry has said it received an invitation "at the highest level," though it has stopped short of confirming Putin's attendance.
