A bipartisan group of 14 senators urged President Donald Trump Thursday night to disinvite Russian President Vladimir Putin from the Group of 20 summit in Miami this December.
“President Putin bears sole responsibility for launching Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine,” the senators wrote in the letter shared exclusively with The Washington Post. “Allowing him to participate in a G20 Summit in the United States raises serious concerns about legitimizing and normalizing a government that continues to attack Ukrainian civilian targets every day.”
The senators note that Putin, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and others in the Russian delegation are under U.S. sanctions for participating in conduct deemed to be a threat to national security, and argue that Putin may have little incentive to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine if he’s not isolated from the rest of the international community.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the invitation Wednesday and called it “an opportunity for him to engage not just with the president but with other world leaders.”
Siluanov’s attendance at the G-20 meeting of finance ministers in Asheville, North Carolina, last month surprised other attendees and infuriated European Union members, who demanded he be left of out of the ministerial group photo.
Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) led the letter, which was signed by six other Democrats and six other Republicans. Wicker is the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Shaheen is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
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