It was all smiles for the "family photo" taken on the first day of the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Monday, November 18, in the presence of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Ever since Moscow's troops invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the leaders of the world's 20 largest economies have largely avoided appearing in the company of Vladimir Putin's representative. This time, the Brazilian presidency used a subterfuge to bring them together, not under the official banner of the G20, but in the name of the Alliance to End Hunger, President Lula's top priority for the occasion. French President Emmanuel Macron even took the opportunity to shake hands with the Russian, without speaking to him. A second official group photo was taken on Tuesday, this time without Lavrov, but with the American president, Joe Biden, who had been absent the day before.

Lula did everything in his power to avoid a tussle over Ukraine, so as not to widen the gulf between the West and the emerging countries of the South, led by China, a gulf which is growing ever deeper as the conflict turns to Moscow's advantage. At the meeting on Monday, he did not hesitate to interrupt – "in an aggressive manner," according to a European official – the debates on the draft conclusions. But the war was never far from the center of the discussions, whether in terms of the risk of conflagration in the Middle East, or above all the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv.

And with good reason: In the run-up to the summit, Russia stepped up its bombardment of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. And on Tuesday, two days after receiving the green light from Biden, Ukraine carried out its first strikes using American missiles against military targets on Russian territory. "We will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia and we will react accordingly," Lavrov retorted. He then suggested that Kyiv's allies read all of the new Russian doctrine, unveiled that very morning, to widen the possibility of the use of atomic weapons against a state aided by a nuclear power.

"That is not going to deter our support for Ukraine," commented the head of the British government, Keir Starmer, in Rio. Macron, for his part, denounced Russia's "escalatory posture," which he raised on Tuesday morning during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In the absence of Putin, Lavrov didn't have to do much to protect his country from being singled out by the G20. Many of Moscow's partners, such as China and India, who are calling for a cessation of hostilities, had warned that they would not accept any condemnation of Russia, in line with the previous summit in New Delhi in 2023. Given the balance of power, the West had few illusions about their own ability to impose more robust language.

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