Ukrainian negotiators are meeting with US officials in Florida to thrash out details of Washington’s proposed framework to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, as Kyiv faces pressure on military and political fronts.
The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, are sitting down with a Ukrainian delegation on Sunday before planned US talks this week in Moscow with Vladimir Putin.
Rustem Umerov, the secretary of the national security and defence council in Ukraine, posted a photo of the meeting on X and described it as focusing on “steps toward achieving a just peace”.
At least six people were killed and dozens wounded across Ukraine over the weekend. A drone attack on the outskirts of Kyiv on Saturday night had killed one person and wounded 11, the regional governor said.
A Ukrainian security source said Kyiv was responsible for attacks by naval drones on two oil tankers off Turkey’s Black Sea coast that it believed were covertly transporting sanctioned Russian oil.
The talks will focus on details of a draft framework to end the war, more than three years after Russian forces launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The US has pared back an initial draft after criticism from Kyiv and Europe that it was too favourable towards Russia, but the contents of the latest proposals remain unclear. Witkoff, a New York property developer turned Trump official, is expected to travel to Moscow next week.
The original 28-point US-Russian plan was drawn up last month by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy, and Witkoff. It called on Ukraine to withdraw from cities it controls in the eastern Donbas region, limit the size of its army, and not join Nato. Washington’s original proposal – drafted without input from Ukraine’s European allies – would have involved Kyiv’s withdrawal from its eastern Donetsk region and the US’s de facto recognition of Donetsk, Crimea and Luhansk as Russian.