After US-Ukraine meeting in Florida, focus shifts to Putin

KHARKIV, Ukraine and LONDON — President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is due to travel to Moscow on Monday to present a peace plan proposal to Russian President Vladimir Putin in what is expected to be a crucial test for the Trump administration’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

Witkoff is travelling to Putin a day after taking part in talks with a high-level Ukrainian delegation in Florida, aimed at trying to find a deal to end the war that Ukraine and Russia might accept.

There is little expectation Putin will agree to a deal. The Russian leader has already signalled he will not compromise, last week making hardline remarks where he repeated his demands that Ukraine withdraw from territory he claims and saying it is “pointless” to negotiate with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He suggested the Kremlin believes it is making sufficient progress on the battlefield and is content to wait until Kyiv concedes to its conditions.  

Zelenskyy is expected to be in Paris today to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron, with whom he’s expected to discuss the negotiations with the U.S. Zelenskyy and Europe appear to be signaling solidarity on a day when the U.S. and Putin are expected to dominate the airwaves.  

Zelenskyy on Sunday said his emissaries in Florida had reported back the “main parameters” of what had been discussed, along with “some preliminary results.” But the full details were still to be relayed, he said.

“I look forward to receiving a full report from our team during a personal meeting,” Zelenskyy said on social media.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday after taking part in the talks with Ukraine the next steps in the negotiations were “delicate,” adding that “it’s complicated, there are a lot of moving parts.”

There was “another party involved here that’ll have to be a part of the equation — and that’ll continue later this week when Mr. Witkoff travels to Moscow, although we’ve also been in touch in varying degrees with the Russian side,” Rubio said. 

“We have a pretty good understanding of their views as well,” Rubio said. 

Officials from Ukraine and the United States both said the about 2-hour meeting at Shell Bay Golf Course in Hallandale Beach were productive, but neither side released details about what agreements were made and there is no indication a breakthrough was made on the most difficult issues that would allow an end to the war.

The meeting discussed a revised 19-point peace plan that was developed a week ago during another round of negotiations in Geneva between the U.S. and Ukraine. Those talks reworked an earlier 28-point plan that the Trump administration had presented and that had alarmed Kyiv and European allies as heavily favoring Russia.

Officials on Sunday did not release details about whether the proposal had again been updated.

A source familiar with the talks said they had discussed security guarantees for Ukraine, as well as including the fate of billions of dollars of Russian assets frozen by Western countries and possible elections in Ukraine. The issue of the frozen assets was a “key” one for the Russians, the source said.

On the crucial issue, though, of Russia’s demand that Ukraine surrender unoccupied territory in the Donbas region, there was no sign of progress. The source said Russia was still unwilling to discuss any form of ceasefire and Ukraine is not willing to cede territory.

Rubio said the talks had been “a very productive and useful session where additional progress was made.” 

“I think there is a shared vision here that this is not just about ending the war, which is very important; it is about securing Ukraine’s future, a future that we hope will be more prosperous than it’s ever been,” he told reporters after emerging from the talks with Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, who had been the lead negotiator from Kyiv. 

“We worked — we already had a successful meeting in Geneva, and today we continued this success,” Umerov said, adding that there would be “later stages” to the talks.