US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that talks with a Ukrainian delegation on the plan to end Russia’s war were “productive” but “complicated” as President Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, prepares to travel to Moscow.
Rubio met with Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, in Florida to discuss “reliable security guarantees” and a pathway for a sovereign, more prosperous Ukraine.
The meeting also included Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
“This is delicate. It’s complicated,” Rubio told reporters, saying there was “more work to be done” and “a lot of moving parts,” including Russia as “another party involved … that will have to be a part of the equation.”
The talks followed a meeting in Geneva a week earlier, where Rubio and Ukrainian officials revised Trump’s original 28-point peace proposal, initially criticized as a Russian wish list.
That draft envisaged Ukraine ceding the entire Donbas region, limiting its armed forces and abandoning its NATO ambitions.
The United States cut the plan to 19 points after criticism from Kyiv and Europe, though the latest version has not been made public.
Umerov said on X that Ukraine was focused on safeguarding its interests and securing “real peace” and long-term security guarantees, later calling the Florida talks “productive.”
Witkoff is due to travel to Moscow for talks on Tuesday with Russian officials including President Vladimir Putin.
Putin has said the unpublished US draft could be a “basis for future agreements” and that his talks with Witkoff should focus on occupied Donbas and Crimea.
The negotiations come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky grapples with a corruption scandal that forced the resignation of his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.
Trump, referring to the corruption probe, said Ukraine had “some difficult little problems” but added there was “a good chance we can make a deal.”
Zelensky wrote on X that the United States was showing a “constructive approach” and said steps to achieve a “dignified” end to the war could be fleshed out in the coming days.
He also spoke with NATO chief Mark Rutte and is due in Paris on Monday for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron.
On the ground, Russian forces claimed further advances and launched repeated attacks on Kyiv. A drone strike on the capital’s outskirts on Sunday killed one person and wounded 11, officials said.
Overnight attacks on Saturday killed six, wounded dozens and cut power to 400,000 households in Kyiv.
A Ukrainian security source said Kyiv was behind strikes on two oil tankers in the Black Sea it believed were carrying sanctioned Russian oil.
One of Russia’s largest oil terminals halted operations on Saturday after a drone attack, which the Caspian Pipeline Consortium—whose owners include US oil majors Chevron and ExxonMobil—called a “terrorist attack.”
Ukraine, which did not comment on the terminal incident, regularly targets Russian energy infrastructure in an effort to weaken Moscow’s war effort.
(jh/gs)
Source: Reuters, ABC, IAR, PAP