An Accountant in Asheville
On 31 August, in Asheville, North Carolina, Anton Siluanov sat down at a G20 finance ministers’ meeting for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine. When he tried to open a conversation about areas of mutual interest, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cut him off: nothing is possible until the war is over. European ministers refused to appear beside him in the traditional group photograph, and the photograph was taken without him.
The snub is not the story. The composition of the delegation is. Ten days earlier, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov had told a Russian outlet that Moscow was ready to hear new ideas for ending the war, provided they aligned with the goals Putin has set and with realities on the ground. Read alongside Asheville, that statement stops looking like an opening and starts looking like an invoice. Moscow is not testing whether it can stop fighting. It is testing what stopping would be worth, and it sent its finance minister to find out.
The Missing Fifth of Donetsk
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Four and a half years in, the war has settled into an asymmetry that neither side’s rhetoric captures. Russian forces hold roughly 80 percent of Donetsk oblast and virtually all of Luhansk, according to the Institute for the Study of War. The missing fifth of Donetsk is the “fortress belt”, the fortified urban chain of Kostiantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk that has anchored Ukraine’s eastern defence since 2014. Putin has issued fifteen separate deadlines to take Donetsk since 2022 and missed all of them. The current one expires on 31 December 2026.
Diplomacy has been dormant since March, when a scheduled round collapsed as Washington went to war with Iran alongside Israel. Before that came a 28-point American framework, drafted with Russian input in late 2025, that would have recognised Crimea, Luhansk and the whole of Donetsk as de facto Russian, frozen the southern front, and phased Russia back into the global economy. Kyiv and Europe forced it into revision. In August, Volodymyr Zelensky put forward a joint Ukrainian-American-European counter-proposal built on three planks: a ceasefire, reciprocal withdrawal from the current line, and security guarantees underwritten by the EU and NATO. Moscow has not responded to it.
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Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has made a surprise appearance at United States-hosted G20 finance talks in North Carolina, sparking frustration and dismay among European ministers and officials.
Siluanov’s appearance at the talks in Asheville on Monday marks the first time the minister, who was appointed in 2011, has attended a G20 meeting in person since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
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He held a bilateral meeting with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, with Russia’s Ministry of Finance saying the two men discussed financial cooperation within the G20 framework.
A US official said the meeting focused on US President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine.
Asked about the invitation to Siluanov, Trump told reporters: “We like getting along with everybody. One of the reasons I’m so successful, I get along with everybody.”
European officials, however, criticised the move.
Polish Finance Minister Andrzej Domanski said he was unhappy to see Moscow represented, although he recognised the right of G20 hosts to invite guests.
“We do not trust Russia. They lie constantly, and you need to be really, really cautious while discussing with them,” he told the Reuters news agency, stressing that Russia was the aggressor in its conflict with Ukraine.
“So for me, it would be very difficult to have any kind of conversation with Russia.”
German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said the US’s decision to welcome Siluanov sent a “signal I find troubling”.
He said he told Siluanov during a plenary session that Moscow had to end the war and “that we clearly support Ukraine”.
He also said Europe was preparing a further package of sanctions against Russia and hoped for close cooperation with Washington on the measures.
European ministers and central bankers also opposed appearing with Siluanov in the traditional G20 “family photo”, European officials said. The photograph was ultimately taken without the Russian minister.
Klingbeil said European officials, including European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, had discussed Russia’s involvement on Sunday and agreed that maintaining an avenue for dialogue could allow them to deliver a frank message to Moscow.
“However, the mere fact that the Russian finance minister is back – after, I believe, four G20 meetings without Russian participation – indicates an attempt at normalisation, and that makes it all the more important for us to push back,” he said.
Siluanov’s appearance marked a sharp contrast with the G20 meeting in Washington, DC, in April 2022, when his virtual participation prompted officials from Canada, the United Kingdom, the US, and the European Central Bank to walk out.
Asked about Siluanov’s attendance, White House spokesman Kush Desai told the AFP news agency that the Trump administration had been working with Russia to push for a deal that “would stop the endless bloodshed that the president has really condemned”.
“The president and the administration will never shy away from talking with the folks we need to talk to, to further that,” he said. “That’s what we’re working on here at the G20.”
Separately, Reuters and AFP, citing sources familiar with the Washington-Moscow talks, said Bessent had made clear that the US would not provide Russia with economic relief until war in Ukraine was over.
Trump has pushed Moscow and Kyiv to reach a deal to halt the fighting, but an initial 28-point plan that largely adhered to Russia’s demands was criticised by Ukraine and European governments.
The US, which currently holds the rotating G20 presidency, did not invite South Africa, last year’s G20 host, to the gathering. Poland, which is not a permanent G20 member, was invited.
Certain reporters from major US newsrooms, including The New York Times and Bloomberg News, were not granted credentials to cover the gathering.
The decision was condemned by the National Press Club, which said that “no administration should be allowed to handpick the press corps that scrutinizes it”.
The two-day meeting comes as global debt levels have reached a record of nearly $353 trillion and the global economy faces an energy shock triggered by the US-Israel war on Iran. The talks also come amid rising tensions over China’s large trade surplus and uncertainty over the effects of a surge in artificial intelligence investment.
Aug. 31 (UPI) — Finance ministers and other officials from the Group of 20 nations, as well as many CEOs, met Monday in Asheville, N.C., at a summit in which U.S. leaders intended to focus on growth and Iran — but also drew protests from other leaders for the inclusion of the Russian minister.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told officials that the United States wants to focus on the mission of accelerating growth and said the countries need to work together
“The world is awash in debt, and the only way for us to get out of this is to grow our way out of this,” Bessent said, CNBC reported.
He also said a “durable” global economy” cannot rest on “beggar-thy-neighbor acts that stifle fair, market-based competition,” The New York Times said.
In introductory comments, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh also focused on growth, saying the time is one of “secular growth.”
“If I were to try to characterize this moment, it would be one of a global investment surge,” he said.
Bessent said earlier Monday in a CNBC interview that the U.S. plan to pressure and isolate Iran through its economy can work without China, which opposes the sanctions. He is expected to ask the other finance ministers to join in those sanctions.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was at the meeting — at the invitation of the Trump administration — for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
This drew protests from other European ministers, who have issued their own sanctions against Russia for that war. Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil told The Times that he scolded Siluanov over the war and said the European ministers demanded the Russian minister be left out of a traditional group photo. It was eventually taken without Siluanov.
“Receiving the Russian finance minister here sends a signal I find troubling,” he told reporters. “I would have preferred clear positioning from the U.S. side that he not be received like a regular guest.”
Ukraine’s finance minister was not present in person at the meeting.
In addition, European ministers protested that the United States did not invite representatives from South Africa, a G20 country, to the meeting. Trump administration officials also invited many U.S. business executives but denied requests to include business leaders from other G20 countries.
The United States takes its turn chairing the G20 finance track this week under distinctly awkward conditions.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh are hosting counterparts in the North Carolina mountains, following a deputies meeting held over the weekend, with the formal agenda covering economic growth, global imbalances, sovereign debt restructuring, banking regulation and energy security.
Asheville was chosen deliberately.
The city was devastated by Hurricane Helene in September 2024, a storm that killed more than 250 people and caused close to $80 billion (€69bn) in damage from Florida to the Carolinas, and Bessent has cited its rebuilding as a fitting backdrop for talks about economic growth.
“We want the rest of the world to come along with our growth agenda, whether it’s deregulation, the energy independence […]” he said, adding that “the world has this mountain of debt, and we do have to grow our way out of it,” confirming public debt will feature prominently in the discussions.
The setting may prove easier than the substance.
Trade friction between the US and Canada escalated after negotiations broke down, hostilities with Iran have resumed through economic rather than military means, and Warsh arrives days after a hawkish first Jackson Hole address that sharply raised the odds of a US rate rise this month.
Both meetings serve as groundwork for the leaders’ summit at Trump National Doral in Miami on 14 and 15 December, and come weeks before Xi Jinping is expected in Washington on 24 September.
The US Treasury Secretary intends to use bilateral meetings to build support for squeezing Tehran, and stated that Washington will sanction another bank this week, though he declined to name it.
“This is going to be financial violence if we have to,” Bessent told AP.
“We are showing people that we know who you are, you know who you are, and this has got to stop,” he added.
The campaign’s opening move came on Friday, when the US Treasury proposed a rule that would cut the Emirati branches of Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest lender, off from the American financial system.
By stopping short of full sanctions, the US administration appeared to signal reluctance to punish major trading partners that still deal with Iran, notably China and India.
On Beijing specifically, Bessent said “all options are on the table” over its continued oil purchases, while dismissing suggestions of hesitancy as “a completely false narrative that the media picked up on.”
The meetings are also being held under unusual media restrictions, after the US Treasury barred certain reporters from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg from covering them.
The New York Times called the move “not just another disturbing effort by the administration to undermine independent journalism, but a blatant attempt to evade public scrutiny.”
The department has not explained its decision, though Bessent told the AP that “it has nothing to do with point of view.”
The EU is represented by Ireland’s Tánaiste and Finance Minister Simon Harris, who holds the role by virtue of Ireland’s EU presidency since 1 July, alongside ECB President Christine Lagarde and Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis.
Harris said he was looking forward to “the first Ministerial meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors since Ireland assumed the Presidency of the EU,” describing the forum as a place where the largest economies “can exchange views and work towards international economic and financial stability.”
The Irish minister’s stated priority reflects the conflict shaping much of the agenda at this G20 meeting.
Among the EU’s concerns, Harris listed “energy security and ensuring we have secure and resilient energy supplies at a time of severe volatility caused by the conflict in the Middle East.”
He will also hold bilateral meetings with counterparts from G20 member states as Ireland has also been invited as a guest for the December leaders’ summit in Miami.
Additional sources • AP
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The U.S. Treasury Department has blocked certain journalists from covering G20 finance ministers’ summit in North Carolina this week.
Individual reporters from The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News and The New York Times (NYT) were denied credentials to the