Russia’s finance minister made a surprise appearance at a gathering of top global economic policymakers on Monday after a prolonged absence, an invitation that was extended by the Trump administration but drew rebukes and protests from European officials committed to isolating Moscow for its war against Ukraine.
The summit of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 nations, in the mountain town of Asheville, was billed by the Treasury Department as a chance to find global cooperation on new economic punishments for Iran and new strategies to boost growth at a time of stubbornly high inflation and rising borrowing costs that are straining government budgets.
Instead, the meeting opened on Monday morning with European outrage over the Russian finance minister, Anton Siluanov, who was physically in attendance for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Lars Klingbeil, the German vice chancellor and finance minister, told reporters that he had scolded Mr. Siluanov during an early session of the meeting for the invasion, demanding that Russia end the war and pledging ongoing support for Ukraine, which was not represented in person at the gathering.
Serhiy Marchenko, Ukraine’s finance minister, is expected to participate by video conference on Monday afternoon in a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of 7 nations that France is leading. France is host of the G7 this year and will be holding the meeting on the sidelines of the broader G20 gathering.
European leaders have worked to isolate Russia in the global economy and on the diplomatic stage, and, at a moment in the war when Moscow has relentlessly bombarded Kyiv, they did not want anything at the meeting to suggest that has changed.
“Receiving the Russian finance minister here sends a signal I find troubling,” Mr. Klingbeil told reporters on Monday afternoon. “I would have preferred clear positioning from the U.S. side that he not be received like a regular guest.”
Mr. Siluanov’s presence was not announced publicly by American officials before the summit, and White House officials did not respond to questions on Sunday over whether he had been invited. His appearance came as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was set to join President Xi Jinping of China and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran at a summit in Kyrgyzstan. China’s finance minister and the head of its central bank were, as is typical, also in attendance at the G20 meeting.
Mr. Klingbeil said European representatives had unanimously demanded that their American hosts not include Mr. Siluanov in a traditional group photo from the summit, threatening to boycott if he was in the picture.
It was eventually taken without him, and with the Europeans.
Many Europeans were also upset that representatives from South Africa, a longtime member of the G20 and Africa’s largest economy, were not invited by the Treasury Department to Asheville. President Trump announced last year, after skipping a G20 summit hosted by South Africa, that he would exclude the country from this year’s meetings, citing a false narrative that white South Africans were being indiscriminately killed and that their land was being seized.
Administration officials invited a group of American business executives, from industries like banking and cryptocurrency, to meet with the government leaders in an effort to create networking opportunities between government officials and the private sector. They rebuffed requests to also include executives from other G20 countries. The moves have unsettled some attendees at the gathering; Mr. Klingbeil appeared to have left the first C.E.O. session to speak to reporters.
As he welcomed his international counterparts to the summit, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. wanted to refocus the G20 on its original mission of accelerating global growth. He said countries needed to work together to reverse global economic imbalances that were harming many nations.
“A durable global economy cannot rest on beggar-thy-neighbor acts that stifle fair, market-based competition,” Mr. Bessent said.
The summit comes at a pivotal moment, with the International Monetary Fund projecting that global growth will slow this year and inflation will rise. The decision by the United States to attack Iran in February disrupted the flow of oil and pushed energy prices higher, darkening the outlook for a world economy that has been battered by wars and a pandemic in recent years.
Huddled in a North Carolina mountain resort, officials were expected to discuss ways to reinforce global supply chains for commodities such as critical minerals, opportunities to increase international investment and strategies for reducing or restructuring debt. The conversations are taking place as the U.S. gross national debt just topped $40 trillion, creating anxiety among bondholders and raising fears about higher borrowing costs.
“Mounting fiscal pressures, as evidenced by rising bond yields, and a stalled disinflation process — they are sources of worries both for markets and for policymakers,” Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the I.M.F., told reporters ahead of the meetings.
Those concerns have been especially evident in the United States. In recent weeks, Mr. Bessent initiated surprising interventions in global currency markets and in the U.S. bond market in an effort to contain rising borrowing costs. Those measures have so far been only modestly effective, and they have drawn pushback from the European Union, which has seen its own currency suffer as a result of some of Mr. Bessent’s machinations.
Global leaders also remain wary of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which has driven up energy costs worldwide, disrupted supply chains and dragged on growth.
Unifying the G20 has been a challenge for the administration, as countries continue to cope with the uncertainty surrounding Mr. Trump’s trade policies and the steep tariffs that he has imposed on imports, along with fallout from the war.
American officials have asked allies to join their “Operation Economic Outcast” initiative, which aims to strangle the Iranian economy and resolve the conflict through economic sanctions. Mr. Bessent warned last week that countries that did not sever economic ties with Iran would also face U.S. sanctions.
A senior Treasury official said in a briefing ahead of the Asheville meetings that the Iran plans would feature prominently in the discussions. Mr. Bessent signaled last week that the United States would have limited patience for countries that maintained economic ties with Iran, and that he hoped other countries would comply with the Trump administration’s demands to cut off Iran in order to avoid a broader global economic war.
“Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?” Mr. Bessent said.
In another controversy, the Treasury has denied press credentials for attending the meetings to certain U.S.-based reporters for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, along with correspondents for Bloomberg News from several countries.
Germany’s finance ministry intervened with the Treasury after it initially denied credentials to German-based reporters from The Times and Bloomberg, who planned to travel with Mr. Klingbeil to Asheville.
The ministry succeeded in securing a credential for the Times reporter, the newspaper’s Berlin bureau chief, but not the Bloomberg reporter.
A diplomatic official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under a customary practice in the official’s home country, said German officials viewed the denial of credentials for Bloomberg, an international news agency, as unprecedented and unacceptable.
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