Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband confronted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in Atlanta on Friday, telling him that Russia is not winning its war in Ukraine. The exchange was one of the sharpest public moments of a meeting already marked by disagreement over Russia's presence.

What Miliband said

Miliband told Lavrov that Britain and others knew who the aggressor was, and that Russia had started the war with its full-scale invasion four and a half years ago. He pointed to a strike on Dnipro railway station the previous day, which he said killed 15 people, as an example of civilian deaths in the conflict. He urged Lavrov to have the courage to tell President Vladimir Putin that Russia was not winning, crediting the courage of the Ukrainian people and the solidarity of allied countries for holding back Moscow's advance.

The cancelled group photograph

The G20 family photograph was scrapped after European delegations, including Britain, refused to be pictured alongside Lavrov. Germany's foreign minister had said publicly there would be no photograph with European partners together with Lavrov, and the United States, as host, dropped the photocall rather than stage separate pictures. A UK government source said Britain was not going to take part in any picture with the Russian foreign minister.

The wider context at home

Miliband called on all countries to keep pressure on Moscow by depriving Putin of the revenues that sustain the war. The confrontation came two days after the UK Budget set defence spending at £72.8 billion in 2027-28 and £75.5 billion in 2028-29, about £2 billion less over the two years than promised in June. The Treasury says the difference is a pensions accounting change with no impact on defence spending power, and that overall defence spending is still rising.