When Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov took his seat at the G20 finance talks in Asheville, North Carolina — his first in-person appearance at such a gathering since Russia's invasion of Ukraine — the room did not simply divide; it revealed a fault line that had been quietly widening beneath the architecture of Western unity. The Trump administration, framing the invitation as a step toward peace, extended a hand that European allies experienced as a wound, raising the oldest of diplomatic questions: whether engagement is a path toward resolution or a quiet concession to the unresolved.