The German Foreign Minister called on her Russian counterpart to end the war in Ukraine. The two unlikely chief diplomats will no longer be friends.
There will be no group photo of the chancellors of the G20 countries in front of Pão de Açúcar, in Rio de Janeiro, as is usual, this Thursday. The Brazilian hosts have already declared this in their protocol. Russian veteran Sergei Lavrov is considered a pariah, at least by his Western colleagues. The American Antony Blinken, the British David Cameron and the German Annalena Baerbock joined the opening and, demonstratively, scolded the Russian Foreign Minister.
Lavrov has definitely completed the most enjoyable part of his business trip to Latin America. At the beginning of the trip he visited old friends and allies in Cuba and Venezuela, and there was no shortage of kind words. In Rio de Janeiro, however, he had to deal with an intimate enemy – and that has history. At the 2022 G20 foreign ministers' meeting in Bali, he opened the round with a barrage of anti-Western rhetoric before walking out of the meeting, lest he be confronted with focused criticism of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. Annalena Baerbock in particular was offended by this.