European foreign ministers refused to be pictured with Sergei Lavrov at the summit being held in Atlanta.
Page A226From§Eachthe afternoon edition — 30 October 2026
Asked to drop Russia from the G20 photo, the hosts dropped the photo instead.
As it ran on the front
Today we are making a family photograph, which is not a dish you can get over here, so I shall go slowly. You will need twenty foreign ministers, a camera that has done this every G20 for years, and Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, standing where the other nineteen were due to stand.
Clive Standing where you're not wanted, I know well. I stood at an open mic in Totnes for forty minutes; three people clapped, and none of them were you.
…(cont) Begin in Atlanta, on Friday, at the two-day G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting hosted by the United States. Several of the ministers objected to being pictured beside him, and the hosts did what a kitchen does when a dish will not come together: they put the camera away and carried on without it.
Gary Forty minutes for three claps. I took the shed door off in nine, and that's a smaller room than Totnes.
This is not the first course Russia has sat out this year. In September, at the G20 finance meeting in Asheville, European officials pushed back on the invitation given to Russia's finance minister, Anton Siluanov, saying his presence risked normalising ties with Moscow amid its full-scale war. The one in Atlanta did not.
Keith Nine minutes and nothing sold. A door's worth money broken properly — get a flag on it and call it heritage stock.
You will be looking for the vote to remove his seat, or the resolution suspending him from the table. There is no such paper. Refusing to stand in a photograph is what Europe has instead of one.
The BBC, which is what they have here, has the photograph "cancelled after protests over presence of Russian minister," and says plainly that "European foreign ministers refused to be pictured with Sergei Lavrov" in Atlanta. The Hill, filing from the same two days, has it as Lavrov having "crashed" the party.
It serves the nineteen ministers who did not stand beside him, and it costs the Americans hosting the meeting, who now have a two-day G20 with no family photograph to show for it.
Rob Four years since anyone's photographed this house. Even the landlord keeps his distance.
“They didn't remove Russia from the room, they removed the camera, so there's no picture of him sitting there to begin with. Lavrov keeps his seat at the summit just the same, minus the evidence, and that's the trade Washington keeps making while the war goes on.”
“Look, you have to keep channels open, that's just statecraft — you invite the people you need in the room, including the Russians, no wait, I mean including whoever's necessary. And if the Europeans can't manage standing next to a man for one photograph, that's a them problem, not a hosting problem. Did I say that? That's not really our line.”
The receipts
The U.S. hosts of the Group of 20 (G20) Foreign Ministers' Meeting opted to skip the traditional “family photo” Friday after several top diplomats objected to being photographed with a Russian official.
· Europe blasts Russian finance minister's attendance at Asheville G20 from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.