Rubio, Witkoff meeting Ukrainian team in Florida early Sunday

Greg Sullivan, Bloomberg News on Nov 30, 2025

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U.S. officials are meeting with a Ukrainian delegation in south Florida as the White House continues its drive toward an agreement on ending the Kremlin’s almost four-year war on Ukraine.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son in law, are attending the talks at Witkoff’s Shell Bay golf club in Hallandale Beach, north of Miami, the State Department said.

National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov is leading the Ukrainian negotiating team, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday. Bloomberg reported earlier that First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya would be among the officials joining Umerov.

“We want to see the end of the killing and the death and the suffering, and we are sure the Ukrainians want peace,” Rubio said Sunday before the meeting — expected to last one to two hours — kicked off.

“This is not just about ending the war, but ending a war in a way that creates a mechanism and a way forward that will allow them to be independent and sovereign and never having another war again,” Rubio said.

Umerov said his delegation had been tasked with safeguarding Ukrainian interests and ensuring substantive dialogue, and that he’s in “constant contact” with Zelenskyy. “We are working to secure real peace for Ukraine and reliable, long-term security guarantees,” he said on the X platform.

Witkoff is set to lead a U.S. delegation for talks in Russia in the coming week. It’s unclear when those meetings will take place.

Amid the diplomatic flurry that included talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Geneva a week ago, Russia continues regular attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilian targets, including housing, in a bid to undermine morale heading into winter.

Ukraine has responded by repeatedly targeting Russian oil refineries and other energy facilities, and on Saturday claimed responsibility for strikes on two ocean-going tankers in the Black Sea that are part of a “shadow fleet” that transports Russian crude oil.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Nov. 27 that Trump’s proposals for ending his war in Ukraine could form the basis for a future agreement, but cautioned there wasn’t any final version yet.

The initial 28-point plan put forward by the White House was formulated chiefly following talks between Witkoff and Russia’s Kirill Dmitriev, excluding Ukraine and its allies.

The Ukrainian delegation’s trip comes at a delicate moment. Andriy Yermak, Zelenskiy’s closest ally and top aide, who’d been leading the peace talks, resigned on Friday under a corruption cloud following a raid on his apartment by anti-graft investigators.

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