For the first time since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a senior Russian official has attended a G20 finance ministers’ meeting in person.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov travelled to Asheville, North Carolina, after being invited to the US-hosted gathering by the Trump administration. Washington may call it diplomacy, but from Ukraine, Europe and many of the US’s allies, it looks increasingly like rehabilitation.
Russia has not withdrawn from Ukraine, on the contrary, Moscow continues launching missiles and drones against Ukrainian cities, recruiting foreign manpower and incorporating North Korean troops and weapons into its war effort.
Yet Russia is gradually being welcomed back into the room.
Europe, thankfully, appears considerably less comfortable with that idea with German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, particularly clear, saying Russia alone bears responsibility for ending the war and warning that the international community “cannot simply return to normality.”
European ministers and central bankers subsequently opposed appearing alongside Siluanov in the traditional G20 “family photo.”
NEW: After pushback from Europeans, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was not included in the #G20 family photo pic.twitter.com/son1tkLlBM
— Julie Tsirkin (@news_jul) September 1, 2026
The solution was remarkably simple, Russia was not in it.
While Washington opens the door to Moscow, the latest numbers emerging from Russia itself demonstrate the extraordinary human cost of Vladimir Putin’s so-called “Special Military Operation.”
The joint BBC Russian and Mediazona project has independently verified the deaths of nearly 240,000 Russian servicemen since February 2022.
These are not Ukrainian military or NATO estimates, but Russian names, painstakingly identified through obituaries, cemetery records, official notices, social media and other open sources. More importantly, the figure represents a minimum rather than an estimate of Russia’s complete military death toll.
So remember how this war was originally sold.
Ukraine was supposed to collapse rapidly, Kyiv would fall, its government would be replaced and Moscow would once again dictate the political future of its neighbour.
Instead, nearly four and a half years later, approaching a quarter of a million Russian military dead have been independently identified by name, and Moscow appears to need considerably more men.
Ukrainian intelligence has repeatedly warned that Russia is preparing plans that could involve mobilising another 300,000 personnel, potentially followed by another 300,000 in 2027.
Whether those numbers are ultimately mobilised remains to be seen, but Russia has already been constructing the digital and administrative infrastructure required to make another mobilisation considerably easier to enforce.
Russia needs bodies.
And its manpower problem is no longer simply Russian.
From Somalia to Sri Lanka: The global manpower pipeline feeding Putin’s war
I recently returned from a Ukrainian prisoner-of-war camp in western Ukraine, where I spoke with foreign nationals captured while serving in Russia’s armed forces.
Ukraine says Moscow has recruited tens of thousands of foreigners, while Ukrainian intelligence has previously said the Kremlin intends to recruit at least 18,500 foreign nationals during 2026 alone.
I have now seen the other end of that recruitment pipeline myself, Men from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere are arriving on Ukraine’s battlefield.
Their stories vary with some understanding they were joining the Russian military. Others described civilian employment offers, enormous salaries, promises of citizenship or recruitment networks that ultimately delivered them into Russian military service. North Korea represents something considerably more serious as Ive previously reported, as this is state-backed manpower arriving alongside weapons, missile systems, technical expertise and established military structures.
North Korean personnel and weaponry are no longer an interesting side note to Russia’s invasion but increasingly becoming part of the Kremlin’s strategic calculations. Meanwhile, the nuclear rhetoric has never disappeared. Russian State Duma deputy Alexei Zhuravlyov recently called for tactical nuclear weapons to be used against Ukraine to force Kyiv to surrender.
These warmongering cheerleaders for more terror and death, like the animal Alexey Zhuravlev, calling for the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, are frankly deranged.
This isn’t fringe rhetoric anymore. It’s coming from sitting members of Russia’s State Duma. pic.twitter.com/0z7Aac1d3A
— Shaun Pinner (@ShaunPinnerUA) August 31, 2026
I will say there is currently no evidence Russia is preparing to conduct such a strike, and the comments of one parliamentarian should not be confused with an operational decision by the Kremlin.
But consider how extraordinary it is that this language has become almost routine. A parliamentarian from a nuclear-armed state openly discusses using nuclear weapons against a European country Russia invaded, while representatives of that same state are simultaneously being welcomed back into international forums. For me, those two realities do not comfortably coexist.
Nearly 240,000 Russian military deaths have now been independently identified by name, Moscow may need hundreds of thousands more Russians to continue its campaign. Foreign recruitment continues, while North Korean manpower and weapons have become increasingly important.
None of this resembles a Russia preparing for peace, but considerably more like a Russia preparing to sustain a much longer war, and that’s why Europe’s refusal to smile alongside the Russian delegation for a family photograph matters.
Diplomacy with Russia may eventually be necessary, however, diplomacy and normalisation, during a war that has only increased in scale and become increasingly global, are not the same thing. Russia needs to understand where it sits at the table while Ukrainian families continue burying their children, fathers and mothers and there should be no illusion that relations have returned to normal while the invasion continues.
Europe appears to understand that distinction. The increasingly uncomfortable question is whether Washington still does.
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