France

Paris, September 14, 2026. The French press first notes the mechanics of refusal: a public offer from the Ukrainian side, followed by an immediate rejection from the Russian side. In an interview with the German channel Deutsche Welle broadcast on Friday, September 11, Volodymyr Zelensky said he was ready to meet Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Miami in December. "Yes, of course. We must come. We must meet, talk and make decisions," he declared, before adding: "It's not the words that count. (...) Only the result counts."

The Kremlin's response, reported by AFP on Saturday from New Delhi where Dmitri Peskov is accompanying Vladimir Putin to the BRICS summit, leaves little room for doubt: "It's impossible." The Russian spokesman repeats Moscow's demand, which only considers a meeting in Moscow itself. He also specifies that Vladimir Putin's participation in the G20 in Miami is not yet decided: "We don't know yet if we'll go to Miami or not," he told the TASS agency. Diplomatic advisor Iouri Ouchakov confirms to Izvestia that the question "has not been discussed".

French headlines put this exchange into the context of relaunched American diplomacy: emissaries Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Moscow and then Kiev the previous weekend, a trip hailed by Zelensky as "a good signal" and "a mark of respect for our people". Washington, which is chairing the G20 this year, had already hosted Russian Finance Minister Anton Silouanov at a G20 meeting in North Carolina at the beginning of September, causing "discomfort" among Ukraine's European allies. Moscow has also announced that it will send officials to a G20 meeting on energy in Houston next week.

This diplomatic sequence is nonetheless read in France in the light of the ongoing war on the ground: on Saturday, Russia launched 410 attack drones against Ukraine, 336 of which were shot down by air defense; nighttime strikes killed four people, including two employees of an ArcelorMittal plant in Kryvyi Rig. The Miami offer thus appears to the French press less as a breakthrough than as a diplomatic move whose outcome remains suspended on Moscow's sole will.