Ukrainian negotiators said they held “difficult but productive” talks with US officials in Florida on Sunday, ahead of what could be a pivotal week of diplomacy to end Russia’s years-long invasion.
The talks, which included US secretary of state Marco Rubio, Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the US president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, followed discussions in Geneva last week where the two sides reported progress towards a peace plan with Russia.
Rubio said after the talks on Sunday: “Much work remains. But today was again a very productive and useful session, where I think additional progress was made.”
Rustem Umerov, who led the Ukrainian negotiators, described the meeting as “difficult but productive”, adding “significant progress” had been made “on the path to establishing a just peace”.
Kyiv and its European partners have been seeking big changes to a peace plan drawn up by the US, which had significant Russian input.
The diplomacy comes amid mounting political and military challenges for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who dismissed his powerful chief of staff on Friday amid a widening corruption probe that had sucked in several members of his inner circle and senior government officials.
Trump said on Sunday that while the talks were going along well, “Ukraine’s got some difficult little problems . . . the corruption situation going on, which is not helpful.”
Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s former chief of staff, had led the Ukrainian negotiating team in previous rounds of talks aimed at a peace deal.
But following Yermark’s departure on Friday, responsibility for negotiations was passed to Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defence council.
He has been implicated in the corruption probe but is not a suspect, according to authorities in the country. Umerov was joined at the talks in Florida by Ukraine’s 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.
Trump has said Witkoff and possibly Kushner might travel to Moscow in the coming week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Rubio said following Sunday’s meeting that the talks were “not just about the terms that ends fighting, it’s about also the terms that set up Ukraine for long term prosperity”.
“This is delicate. It’s complicated,” Rubio added. “There are a lot of moving parts and obviously there’s another party involved here that will have to be a part of the equation and that’ll continue later this week when Mr Witkoff travels to Moscow.”
Leaked transcripts of phone calls between Witkoff and Russian officials published by Bloomberg this week showed that an original 28-point peace proposal crafted by the US had been designed with Russia’s input.
That plan was described by Ukrainian and European officials as being staunchly pro-Russian.
Trump previously issued an ultimatum to Kyiv to sign the deal by the time of the US Thanksgiving holiday.
But Zelenskyy successfully pushed back, securing a meeting between his negotiators and Trump’s team in Geneva.
After several hours of painstaking talks in Switzerland, the group whittled the initial 28-point proposal down to about 19, watered down several contentious terms and set aside the thorniest ones for Zelenskyy and Trump to decide on.
Those issues include the issue of territory, security guarantees and language around Ukraine’s desire to join Nato, according to Ukrainian officials.
The biggest question hanging over the US-Ukraine talks is how any proposal finalised between them might be agreed by the Russians, who have maintained a maximalist position and have expressed confidence they hold the initiative on the battlefield.
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 peace 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 continued 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.”
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 Russia’s energy 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 Astana, 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.
