Russia has been invited to take part in the G20 summit at the leaders level, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin told the state news agency RIA Novosti earlier today. The summit is scheduled to take place in December 2026 in Miami.
“There is an invitation to attend at the highest level, but we will see closer to the date. God knows what will happen before then,” Pankin said.
Earlier, Russia’s G20 sherpa, Svetlana Lukash, told RIA Novosti that the United States was preparing for the possible arrival of Vladimir Putin at the event. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also previously said Russia was interested in continuing its work with the G20.
The last time Putin attended a G20 summit in person was in Japan in 2019. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, the Russian delegation was led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In 2025, Russia was represented by Maksim Oreshkin, the former Minister of Economic Development and the current Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office.
In 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin. He is suspected of the unlawful deportation of children from occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia, an act that is classified as a war crime. The warrant has complicated Putin’s travel abroad: he could be arrested on the territory of countries that are parties to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. However, the United States is not a party to the ICC, and in 2025, Putin attended a summit in Alaska, where he met with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss a settlement of the conflict in Ukraine.
The G20 is an international forum for economic cooperation. It includes 19 countries — Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, and the United States — as well as the European Union and the African Union. Russia was not expelled from the G20 after its invasion of Ukraine.
