On October 30 local time, the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting was held in Atlanta, USA.
According to CCTV news reports, due to opposition from some European countries' representatives to taking a group photo with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, the organizers cancelled the usual group photo session.
A Western diplomat revealed that one-third of the participants, including those from Australia and Canada, explicitly stated that they did not want to be pictured with Lavrov.
German Foreign Minister Weder Fölker told reporters before the first meeting, "European partners will not join with Lavrov in taking this family photo, because there is no normal state of interaction between Europe and Russia at present."
A U.S. official said that the U.S. removed the group photo session because they did not want this occasion to become a gimmick, distracting the focus of the meeting.
Reports say that European officials have previously suggested that a combined photo could be taken: one photo with Lavrov, and another without him.
According to Sky News in the UK, after learning that the group photo session was cancelled, Lavrov said, "I call this 'family photo diplomacy'."
"If for them, the most important thing was only how they looked in this photo with their family, who stood beside them, then that would have shown everything." Laffurov said.
