Ukrainian and European officials are set to meet US President Donald Trump’s envoys in Miami on Friday to discuss “new ideas” to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Ukraine‘s President Volodomyr Zelenskyy confirmed the meeting on Thursday evening, after a Russian attack on buses killed 30 civilians in the frontline city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine.
Before the strikes in Kramatorsk, a Russian missile hit a five-storey apartment block in the northern Chernihiv region, killing 22 Ukrainians, including five children.
More than 70 people have been killed in Russian strikes on Ukraine in the past two days, Zelenskyy said.
What did Zelenskyy say about the Miami meeting?
“The Ukrainian negotiating team is due to meet Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff in the US tomorrow,” Zelenskyy said. “The meeting is expected to last two days. We are also counting on a European team to join our negotiating group.”
Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, and other top officials, including Rustem Umerov, Sergiy Kyslytsya and David Arakhamia, will also attend, the Ukrainian president said.
“They will discuss new ideas and proposals that American negotiators began developing with the Russians and Ukrainians during their recent visit to the region“, one of the US sources familiar with the talks told AFP.
“They are all nervous about the winter. It will be a tough winter if the war does not stop,” the US source said.
Zelenskyy blames US for inaction
Amid rising civilian casualties and fears of further escalation, Zelenskyy urged the US to accede to his request to expand Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service, which would help it target Russian ballistic-missile launchers.
“Open Starlink for Ukraine. You did open it when you were responding to Iran … I’ve said quite openly — give it to us, help us defend our skies and dominate there. And then Putin will sit down at the negotiating table,” he said.
Zelenskyy went on to accuse the US of being unwilling to pressure Russia into negotiations, adding that enabling Starlink would cost Washington nothing.
“So where’s the truth here, where’s the honesty? Where’s the stalemate? … That’s called unwillingness,” he said.
Zelenskyy was responding to remarks on Wednesday from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said the war in Ukraine was at a stalemate.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that he agreed with Rubio’s assessment, adding that he saw no immediate prospect for a three-way summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelenskyy and Trump.
“One cannot, on the one hand, negotiate with the Russians about future economic projects, whilst on the other hand say that we find ourselves in some sort of … diplomatic stalemate,” Zelenskyy said, countering the US narrative. “We are not a diplomatic dead end,” he said.
Zelenskyy also called for tougher sanctions to cripple the Russian economy, a point Ukrainian officials are expected to press US envoys on at the meeting.
