President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday that Washington had proposed the first face-to-face negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in half a year, as diplomats converged on Miami for fresh talks on ending the war.
Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev said he was heading to Miami, while Ukrainian and European teams were also in the sunny Florida city for the negotiations, mediated by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
“They proposed this format as far as I understand: Ukraine, America, and Russia,” Zelensky said in Kyiv, adding that the Europeans could be present and it would be “logical to hold such a joint meeting.”
Trump’s envoys have pushed a plan in which the United States would offer security guarantees to Ukraine, but Kyiv will likely be expected to surrender some territory, a prospect resented by many Ukrainians.
However, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday promised not to force Ukraine into any agreement, saying, “There’s no peace deal unless Ukraine agrees to it.” He added that he may join Saturday’s talks in Miami, his hometown.
Zelensky said that only the United States was capable of persuading Russia to end the war, and he called on Washington to increase pressure on Moscow to make that happen.
“America must clearly say: if not diplomacy, then there will be full pressure… Putin does not yet feel the kind of pressure that should exist,” he said, stressing the need for more arms supplies to Ukraine and sanctions on the entire Russian economy.
Russian envoy Dmitriev wrote in an X post that he was “on the way to Miami”, adding a peace dove emoji and attaching a short video of a morning sun shining through clouds on a beach with palms.
The last time Ukrainian and Russian envoys held official direct talks was in July in Istanbul, which led to prisoner swaps but little else in the way of concrete progress.