President Donald Trump has invited Vladimir Putin to the G20 leaders' summit at his Doral golf resort in Miami on December 14 and 15, and the invitation, announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, does more than reopen a door for Moscow. It exposes an uneven pattern in which Washington reserves its sharpest instruments for a partner that buys Russian oil, while extending the red carpet to the two capitals that pose the larger challenge. If Putin accepts, it would be his first in-person appearance at a G20 leaders' gathering since 2019 and only his second trip to the United States since Trump returned to office, after the meeting in Alaska in August 2025.
Russia was suspended from the G8 in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea but remains a G20 member. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023 over the deportation of Ukrainian children, yet the United States is not a party to the court, which removes any legal bar to his visit.
Rubio justified the invitation, arguing that "to solve problems, you have to meet with people you disagree with”. However, as a senator, he called Putin a war criminal. As Secretary of State, he now defends the push for direct talks.
Trump apparently wants to cast the United States as a neutral mediator, and he has pressed for a limited ceasefire covering energy infrastructure and shipping in the Black Sea. Diesel prices are rising ahead of the midterm elections, and the administration has urged President Volodymyr Zelensky to halt drone strikes on Russian refineries in the interest of steadier energy markets, viewing a direct dialogue with Putin as essential to achieving this end. Trump’s willingness to host Putin also stems from his longstanding personal opposition to isolating Moscow, his public advocacy for restoring Russia to the G7, and his conviction that he can successfully negotiate by "getting along with everybody".
The decision, however, has led to profound dismay and disbelief among European allies and Ukrainian officials, who view it as an erosion of collective pressure against Russian aggression. In August, at the G20 finance ministerial in Asheville, North Carolina, European ministers led by Germany's Lars Klingbeil protested the presence of Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and declined to pose beside him in the group photograph. The fear now is that a Miami welcome validates Moscow's conduct while Russia continues hybrid attacks across Europe and strikes Ukrainian civilian infrastructure with jet-powered drones.
Moscow has offered little in return. At the United Nations, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov rejected calls for a ceasefire pause, accusing European states of buying time to arm Kyiv. Zelensky urged the General Assembly to choke off Russian revenues rather than throw diplomatic lifelines. He said he would attend the summit or join trilateral talks, but stressed that results matter more than symbolic meetings.
The eager diplomatic welcome for Putin stands in sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s heavy-handed treatment of India. Days before the Putin invitation, Trump signed a sanctions bill that lets him impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on countries that buy Russian energy. India is the obvious target. It draws nearly 50 per cent of its crude imports from Russia to secure supply for 1.4 billion people, at a time when the war with Iran has disrupted shipments from the Middle East.
Washington, in effect, threatens punitive tariffs against a partner for buying discounted Russian oil while offering Putin a welcome at a luxury resort and asking Ukraine to spare Russian oil assets. As the US House Foreign Affairs Committee highlighted, the administration signed punitive sanctions only to immediately signal that it has no genuine intention of isolating Russia, using secondary tariff threats merely as bargaining leverage against partners like New Delhi.
The same logic shows in the treatment of Xi Jinping. Trump travelled last night—the 80-year-old got mocked for wearing winter clothes despite the pleasant weather—to Joint Base Andrews to greet the Chinese president on the tarmac, with a red carpet, a 21-gun honour guard and a military flyover, breaking a protocol of some six decades last observed by John F. Kennedy in 1962. Earlier this year in Beijing, Xi sent Han Zheng, a vice president with a ceremonial role and no seat in the Politburo, to meet Trump at the airport.
China's hold over critical minerals and rare-earth supply chains leaves Washington looking more like a junior partner, and the personal deference shown to Xi serves to protect fragile trade truces. It mirrors the concessions extended to Moscow, none of them reciprocated.
