Ukraine

Kyiv, September 24, 2026. Kyiv is dissociating Washington's diplomatic gesture from any real progress on the ground. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Vladimir Putin had been invited to the G20 summit in Miami in December, after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in New York on the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly. "We think this is an opportunity for him to exchange not only with the President [Trump] but with other world leaders," Rubio said, adding that he hoped Putin would accept. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded that Russia welcomes the invitation; Ukrainian press NV Ukraine describes this gesture as addressed to "dictator" Putin by the "authorities of the aggressor country".

The Ukrainian press notes especially the gap between this gesture and the reality of the front. On the same Wednesday, before the UN Security Council, Lavrov ruled out any military pause: "We will not suspend the special military operation during negotiations in any form." Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha retorted that fourteen of the fifteen members of the Security Council support a ceasefire and that only one aggressor is blocking it.

Received by Donald Trump on September 22 in New York, Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated that Kyiv accepts a reciprocal energy truce: "We are ready for an energy ceasefire," he said, on condition that Moscow stops its strikes on the Ukrainian power grid, heating, and water supply. He specified that no American pressure had been imposed on him to unilaterally stop strikes on Russian refineries. Rubio himself recognized the difficulty of the exercise, noting that both sides consider energy a strategic objective of their war.

Peskov also repeated that there are currently no preconditions for peace talks, while reaffirming that Zelensky should come to Moscow to meet Putin, where "all necessary security guarantees" would be provided; a summit meeting would be premature before prior work at the expert level. Asked by Russian journalists about the date of this trip, Zelensky replied sarcastically: "By rocket."