Russian delegation to visit US for Ukraine peace talks – media
Published 11 hours ago
Source: rt.com
Envoys are expected to meet Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who held discussions with officials from Kiev earlier this week
A Russian diplomatic delegation is expected to travel to Florida this week for talks with the US representatives involved in President Donald Trump’s push to broker a peace agreement in the Ukraine conflict, according to media reports.
The delegation will reportedly be led by senior negotiator Kirill Dmitriev and is scheduled to meet at the weekend with US special presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Miami, Politico and Axios reported, citing sources familiar with the plans. Witkoff and Kushner spent this week in Germany holding discussions with Ukrainian representatives on possible security guarantees for Kiev.
A separate Ukrainian team headed by National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov is also expected to visit Miami later this week, though the reports stressed that no meeting involving all three sides is planned.
Kiev and its European backers have been urging Washington to soften or revise its initial peace proposal, which media reports say addressed several of Russia’s long-standing concerns.
Moscow has avoided commenting on negotiations in which it is not directly involved, repeatedly stating that it can only assess proposals delivered through proper channels. Russian officials have emphasized that any settlement must tackle what they describe as the root causes of the conflict, including the expansion of the Western military presence in Ukraine and Kiev’s discriminatory policies toward ethnic Russians.
Russian forces currently retain the upper hand on the battlefield, with President Vladimir Putin recently saying that accumulated experience in breaking through Ukrainian defenses “allows us to increase the pace of advancement in strategic directions.”
Speaking at a Defense Ministry meeting on Wednesday, Putin blamed the escalation of the conflict on former US President Joe Biden, arguing his team had expected a quick victory over Russia. European leaders, he added, “instantly joined the efforts of the previous American administration in the hope they would benefit from demolishing our nation” and avenge historical grievances against Russia.