Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met this morning as they arrived in South Africa for the two-day G20 Foreign Ministers meeting in Johannesburg over Feb. 20-21. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had declared that he would not attend, accusing South Africa of carrying out anti-American policies. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also announced that he would not attend the Finance Ministers meeting in South Africa next week. Acting U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Dana Brown will represent the U.S. at the Foreign Ministers meeting.
Lavrov’s appearance will be interesting; several of the leading war-hawks from Europe will attend, fresh from their failed “rump meeting” efforts in Paris to form a united EU policy for NATO’s surrogate war against Russia. Lavrov, on the other hand, is coming from the high-level U.S.-Russia meeting in Riyadh, which focused on restoring U.S.-Russia relations and ending the war in Ukraine.
