Rubio, Witkoff Meet With Ukraine Negotiators In Miami To Discuss Plans To End War

Three key Trump administration officials are meeting with Ukrainian negotiators in Miami, Florida this weekend in a push to broker an end to the war Russia began with its 2022 invasion, while setting the stage for talks between Washington and Moscow planned later this week.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner plan to meet with the Ukrainian delegation to discuss portions of a proposed peace deal.

During talks in Geneva last Sunday, the sides reached agreements in principle on all but two issues: territory and security guarantees.

A senior U.S. official said the White House wants to close the gaps on those last two issues on Sunday, saying: “The Ukrainians know what we expect from them.”

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian delegation lost its lead negotiator between Kyiv and Washington, according to an announcement by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday.

Zelenskyy said his chief of staff Andrii Yermak has resigned following a home search by anti-corruption investigators.

Government investigators had uncovered that $100 million was embezzled from Ukraine’s energy sector via kickbacks that contractors had paid.

While neither Zelenskyy nor Yermak has been accused of wrongdoing by those leading the investigation, the Ukrainian president’s political opponents have pushed for more accountability of senior leaders in Kyiv’s government.

As Jacob Burg reports for The Epoch Times, the meeting in Florida is occurring just a week after Rubio met with Yermak in Geneva, with both sides expressing positivity over a revised peace plan from Washington.

Prior to his resignation, Yermak told Axios that territorial concessions could only be negotiated at the presidential level.

But Trump said last week that he would only meet Zelensky and Putin once the parties were close to an agreement to end the war.

“The dialogue based on the Geneva points will continue. Diplomacy remains active. The American side is demonstrating a constructive approach, and in the coming days it is feasible to flesh out the steps to determine how to bring the war to a dignified end. The Ukrainian delegation has the necessary directives, and I expect the guys to work in accordance with clear Ukrainian priorities,” Zelensky said on Saturday.

Following Yermak’s resignation on Friday, responsibility for negotiations was passed to Rustem Umerov, the secretary of the country’s National Security and Defense Council.

He has been implicated in the corruption probe but is not a suspect, according to authorities.

He was joined by first deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, an experienced diplomat and negotiator who sat at the table with the Russians in peace talks this spring that made no progress.

Umerov said on Sunday morning that talks had begun to find a “dignified peace”.

As The FT reports, Russian forces this week continued their large-scale missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s capital and critical infrastructure as troops on the ground in the eastern Donetsk region pressed ahead with assaults on key strongholds.

Ukraine, meanwhile, continued its drone attacks on Russian oil and gas facilities and vessels belonging to its shadow fleet in the Black Sea, including the Russian oil terminal near the southern port of Novorossiysk that is owned by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium.

That attack on Saturday prompted a stern response on Sunday from Kazakhstan, which called on Kyiv to halt strikes on the facility that handles about 1 per cent of global oil supplies, including from Kazakhstan, where the pipeline begins.

The biggest question hanging over the US-Ukraine talks is how any proposal agreed between them might be agreed by the Russians, who have maintained a maximalist position and have expressed confidence that they currently hold the battlefield initiative in the war. Putin has shown openness to a deal only if it is done on his timeline and terms.

Earlier this week, Russia blamed the Europeans and Kyiv for spoiling the initial proposal, or what the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov described as the “only substantive thing” on the table. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov warned that if the revised plan “erased . . . key understandings” reached earlier between Putin and Trump, the situation would be “fundamentally different”.

Nevertheless, Zelenskyy appeared optimistic, telling Ukrainians in his evening address on Saturday that the American side was “demonstrating a constructive approach” to the talks that were set to continue on Sunday.

He added: “In the coming days it is feasible to flesh out the steps to determine how to bring the war to a dignified end.”