Reuters US Top
By Jeff Mason
HALLANDALE BEACH, Florida, Nov 30 (Reuters) - U.S. and Ukrainian officials held what both sides called productive talks on Sunday about a peace deal with Russia, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressing optimism about progress despite challenges in ending the more than 3-year-long war.
"We continue to be realistic about how difficult this is, but optimistic, particularly given the fact that as we've made progress, I think there is a shared vision here that this is not just about ending the war ... it is about securing Ukraine's future, a future that we hope will be more prosperous than it's ever been," Rubio said in Florida, where the talks were being held.
Rubio said the aim is to create a pathway that leaves Ukraine sovereign and independent. The discussions follow roughly two weeks of negotiations that began with a U.S. blueprint for peace. Critics said the plan initially favored Russia, which started the Ukraine conflict with a 2022 invasion.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were also present representing the U.S. side. Witkoff is expected to meet Russian counterparts later this week.
"There are a lot of moving parts, and obviously there's another party involved here that will have to be a part of the equation, and that will continue later this week, when Mr. Witkoff travels to Moscow," Rubio said.
Trump has expressed frustration at not being able to end the war. He pledged as a presidential candidate to do so in one day and has said he was surprised it has been so hard, given what he calls a strong relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has largely resisted concessions to stop the fighting.
Trump's team has pressured Ukraine to make significant concessions itself, including giving up territory to Russia.
The talks shifted on Sunday with a change in leadership from the Ukrainian side. A new chief negotiator, national security council secretary Rustem Umerov, led the talks for Kyiv after the resignation on Friday of previous team leader Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, amid a corruption scandal at home.
As the meeting began, Umerov thanked the United States and its officials for their support. "U.S. is hearing us, U.S. is supporting us, U.S. is walking besides us," Umerov said in English.
After the meeting, he declared the talks productive. "We discussed all the important matters that are important for Ukraine, for Ukrainian people and U.S. was super supportive," Umerov said.
The Sunday talks took place near Miami at a private club, Shell Bay, developed by Witkoff's real estate business.
Zelenskiy had said he expected the results from previous meetings in Geneva would be "hammered out" on Sunday. In Geneva, Ukraine presented a counter-offer to proposals laid out by U.S. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll to leaders in Kyiv some two weeks ago.
Ukraine's leadership, facing a domestic political crisis fueled by a probe into major graft in the energy sector, is seeking to push back on Moscow-friendly terms as Russian forces grind forward along the front lines of the war.
Last week, Zelenskiy warned Ukrainians, who are weathering widespread blackouts from Russian air strikes on the energy system, that his country was at its most difficult moment yet but pledged not to make a bad deal.
"As a weatherman would say, there’s the inherent difficulty in forecasting because the atmosphere is a chaotic system where small changes can lead to large outcomes," Kyiv's first deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, also part of the delegation, wrote on X from Miami on Sunday.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason in Hallandale Beach, Florida; additional reporting by Jasper Ward, Dan Peleschuk and Max Hunder; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Sergio Non)
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