Putin ‘falls out with one of his greatest allies’ after phone call

Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has reportedly fallen out of favour with the Russian president following a ‘disastrous’ call with the US.

The veteran foreign minister Lavrov spoke on the phone with his US counterpart, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in late October to iron out details of the planned meeting between Donald Trump and Putin in Budapest.

However, the call was described as ‘disastrous’ by the Moscow Times, an allegation the Kremlin has denied.

And a day later, Washington cancelled the summit in Hungary and imposed fresh sanctions on Russia, suggesting that the call may not have gone as planned.

The US President said talks with Putin ‘don’t go anywhere’ and he joined the UK in forcing sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.

Oil and gas are integral to the country’s economy and represent its two biggest exports.

Lavrov did not turn up to a crucial Kremlin security council meeting on Wednesday when Putin announced he was thinking about restarting nuclear testing.

The Moscow Times said he was the only permanent member of the council who was not at the meeting.

The spokesperson for the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, also stated yesterday that, unlike in previous years, Lavrov will not lead the Russian delegation at the upcoming G20 summit in South Africa on the weekend of November 22.

But in a press briefing held this morning, Peskov denied that there had been a falling out.

He told journalists that ‘there’s nothing in these reports that corresponds to reality’ and confirmed that Lavrov was still working as foreign minister.

Lavrov, 75, has been Russia’s foreign minister for over 20 years.

Before his appointment by Putin, he was the country’s ambassador to the UN for a decade. He recently rejected appeals for a ceasefire with Ukraine as he said it would ‘preserve the Nazi regime’.

After Trump instructed the Pentagon to resume nuclear testing to match other nations’ programmes, Putin said this week that he would consider restarting Russia’s nuclear tests, which would be the first time since the Cold War ended.

Commenting on the speculation following Trump’s comments, Keir Giles told Metro:  ‘We can see what Trump has said – but what we cannot see is what the US is actually going to do. As always, they are likely to be two different things.

‘There can be a big divergence between the headline quotes and what the US actually follows through with.

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