Zelensky Offers To Meet Putin At Upcoming G20 Summit

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would attend the Group of 20 leaders’ summit in Miami in December and meet Russian President Vladimir Putin if the Russian leader also participates.

The comments came in an interview with Deutsche Welle at Canadian Forces Base North Bay. When asked whether he would travel to the summit to meet Putin if both leaders were invited, Zelensky replied, “Yes, of course. We have to come. We have to meet, to speak and make decisions.”

He added that the content of any conversation was secondary to outcomes. “It’s not about words. What I will tell him or what he wants to tell me, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. […] Results matter. That’s it.”

The 2026 G20 Leaders’ Summit is scheduled for December 14–15 at Trump National Doral Miami under the United States’ presidency of the group. The United States has previously indicated it planned to invite Putin.

Russia’s finance minister attended a G20 gathering in North Carolina in the preceding month, and Russian officials were expected at a subsequent energy meeting in Houston. Putin himself has not attended a G20 leaders’ summit in person since 2019.

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Zelensky ready to meet Putin face-to-face at G20 in Miami https://t.co/rCYyrFpxnD pic.twitter.com/ln7bT9kcVt

— New York Post (@nypost) September 12, 2026

Zelensky’s remarks occurred amid renewed U.S. diplomatic contacts. Special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner visited Moscow and then Kiev earlier in September. Zelensky described their stop in the Ukrainian capital as a “good sign.”

He also said Ukraine was in a stronger position for negotiations than a year earlier, citing Russian battlefield losses that he estimated at more than 30,000 personnel per month. He identified a possible energy and grain ceasefire as an initial step that could lead to broader talks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded that a meeting between the two presidents on the sidelines of the Miami summit was “impossible.” Peskov said there was “a readiness to meet him in Moscow” and repeated that position when asked about alternative venues.

Kremlin foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov said the question of Putin attending the G20 “has not even been discussed.”

The two leaders have not met in person since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Their only face-to-face meeting as presidents took place on December 9, 2019, in Paris. That encounter occurred during a Normandy Format summit also attended by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

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