When Anthony Albanese jets to Florida for the G20 leaders summit later this year, he could come face to face with the architect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The presence of Vladimir Putin at the meeting of the world’s biggest economies would be a stark reminder of the rapidly shifting political reality facing Australia, as the country’s closest security ally becomes even more unpredictable under Donald Trump.

All expectations are that Trump’s Republican party faces a drubbing in the November midterm elections, an outcome likely to further free the US president from whatever constraints still exist in his administration, or his sense of personal propriety.

Even before the result, Trump last month invited his Russian counterpart to attend the summit at his Doral golf club. It is the first time Putin has been offered a spot at major international talks since the start of the invasion in 2022, and the latest signal that the US president craves the approval of authoritarian strongmen over longtime allies and friends.

To take place in mid-December, the G20’s proposed guest list has angered some Republican hardliners in the US as well as the European Union and Italy, but received cautious support from others. Germany said it could represent a chance for serious negotiations on the future of the war, if Putin meets Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Closer to home, the possibility of losing control of the US Congress is clearly already weighing on Trump’s mind.

Less than three........

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