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By Kieran Kelly
November 8, 2025 — 2.37pm
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been sidelined by President Vladimir Putin after his failure to organise a summit with US President Donald Trump in Budapest, according to reports.
The Russian daily Kommersant, a privately owned pro-Kremlin outlet, said that Russia’s long-time foreign minister was “deliberately absent” from a key security council meeting earlier this week.
Kremlinologists are poring over what Sergey Lavrov’s recent apparent absence could mean.Credit: AP
The 75-year-old will also no longer represent Moscow at the coming G20 summit, scheduled for November 22-23 in Johannesburg.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, did not give any explanation for Lavrov’s absence from the key summit, which will be attended instead by Maxim Oreshkin, Putin’s deputy chief of staff.
Putin is unable to travel to South Africa because of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant. In the past, the Russian leader has sent Lavrov in his place, including for the G20 summit in Bali in 2022 and the BRICS summit in Brazil earlier this year.
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It is also significant that Lavrov was frozen out of a Russian Security Council meeting where Putin ordered his officials to consider proposals for resuming nuclear testing, a potentially major shift in policy.
It follows Lavrov’s failure to organise a summit between Putin and his US counterpart in Budapest.
Trump had suggested in October that he would meet Putin to hash out a deal to end the war in Ukraine.
But plans were quickly shelved after a reportedly tense conversation between Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Washington’s top diplomat.
On the call, Lavrov told his counterpart that Russia’s demands for ending the war, which include Ukraine giving up land still under its control and the demilitarisation of Kyiv’s army, had not changed.
Trump responded by announcing new sanctions targeting Russia’s two largest oil companies, marking a significant shift in US policy.
The Kremlin on Friday denied any suggestion that Lavrov had been frozen out by Putin, but the politician has not been seen in public since October.
Attack dog
He was last seen hosting Choe Son-hui, the North Korean foreign minister, in the Kremlin last month.
Lavrov has been one of Putin’s most vocal attack dogs throughout the war in Ukraine, frequently deriding President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government as a “Nazi regime” and demanding that the “root causes” of the conflict be addressed.
Last spotted: Lavrov meets North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui at the Kremlin in late October.Credit: AP
On Friday, Russia said it wanted Washington to clarify recent comments by Trump about the possible resumption of nuclear testing, as Putin considers doing the same.
The US president announced last week that he had ordered the US military to immediately restart the process for testing nuclear weapons. But he did not clarify whether he meant flight-testing of nuclear missiles or tests involving nuclear explosions.
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“If it is the latter, then this will create negative dynamics and trigger steps from other states, including Russia, in response,” Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told reporters.
“For now, we note that the signals emanating from Washington, which are causing justified concern in all corners of the world, remain contradictory, and, of course, the real state of affairs must be clarified.”
Trump’s announcement followed a series of announcements by Putin that Russia had successfully tested the Poseidon nuclear torpedo and its nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile.
The Telegraph, London
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