Following the collapse of the US-Russia summit in Budapest, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov fell out of favor with the Kremlin, being blamed for the diplomatic failure, according to The Moscow Times.
The publication notes that Lavrov, 76, is one of the most senior political figures in Putin’s regime. He has headed the Foreign Ministry for over 20 years and was previously considered one of the dictator’s closest allies.
However, in recent days he has vanished from the public eye. Specifically, Lavrov was absent from the Russian Security Council meeting on November 5, in which Putin announced preparations to resume nuclear testing, which had not been conducted for 35 years.
According to The Moscow Times, it was a crucial meeting, and Lavrov, as a member of the Security Council, should have attended.
According to internal sources, Lavrov’s absence from the meeting was “coordinated.” Furthermore, the Foreign Minister was the only permanent member of the Security Council who missed the meeting.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also informed the press that the Russian delegation to the G20 summit would not be headed by Lavrov, as in recent years, but by the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office, Maxim Oreshkin. According to Peskov, this decision was made directly by Putin.
The Budapest summit was aborted.
As reported by UNIAN, Putin and Trump spoke by phone in October and agreed to meet in Budapest.
The foreign ministers of both countries, Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio, were tasked with preparing the meeting. However, following the phone call between the two, the summit was canceled, and the United States imposed new sanctions against Russia, the first since the beginning of Trump’s second term.
