“In all the three capitals, the idea has been received positively,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press conference following the G20 Foreign Ministerial Council meeting in Atlanta on October 30. Lavrov was responding to a question about public reports of a possible three-way summit meeting on the sidelines of the upcoming Nov. 18-19 APEC meeting in Shenzhen, China, of presidents Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump. “As for the specific organizational aspects,” he added, “these are being handled by the Chinese side as the host country of the APEC summit. But, of course, in the present situation such a meeting is in high demand.”

Lavrov was blunt in his appraisal of the current state of U.S.-Russian relations. “Crucially, however, the essence of the disagreements does not simply disappear… The substantive issues are not being resolved. The sanctions continue. All the measures enacted under former US President Joe Biden are being maintained by the current administration, which is introducing its own additional sanctions against Lukoil and Rosneft... They continue to supply weapons [to Ukraine] through Europe.” Lavrov said that “we see no real shifts in practice.”

Lavrov did clarify that, on the question of the Ukraine negotiations, “we appreciate the position of the Trump administration, which was the first and so far the only Western country to recognize the root causes of the beginning of this operation, of this Ukrainian crisis, and who recognized the need to handle this situation by addressing the root causes and taking into account fully the realities on the ground… We thought we agreed in Anchorage more than one year ago, in August 2025. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and the Trump administration was not able to make its own proposals, fully supported by Russia, acceptable to the Ukrainian regime… The reason being the outrageous activity of Europeans who immediately started to persuade President Trump not to insist on his own initiative, accepted–I will underline this once again—by the Russian Federation.

In response to a question about the “diesel deal” between the U.S. and Russia, Lavrov clearly stated Russia’s policy approach to the strategic situation:

“Regarding the euphoric claims of some of our political scientists and experts that this agreement has “broken the blockade”—we really must come down to earth and not harbor illusions… We must be pragmatists, focus on our interests and ensure they are secured in any situation. Our Western colleagues have let us down more than once. There have been many jokes lately that Russia keeps moving its ‘red lines.’ Ultimately, we must rely on our own strength in all spheres on which our sovereignty depends—most notably, our economic sovereignty.”