Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Trump administration invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Miami, Florida, in December.
If Putin attends, it would be the first G20 Leaders’ Summit in person since he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022.
“We’ve invited President Putin to the G20,” Rubio told reporters on Wednesday in New York City, while attending the United Nations General Assembly meeting. ” We think it’s an opportunity for him to engage, not just with the president but with other world leaders. We hope that’s an invitation he’ll accept.”
President Donald Trump hinted at the idea back in April when he told reporters that it would be “very helpful” if Putin attended the summit in Miami.
“I go to these meetings of the G7, and about 90% of the meeting was talking about Russia and what’s going on with Russia,” Trump said in April. “And I said, ‘Why’d you throw them out?’ You know, if they didn’t throw them out, they would have been much better off, in my opinion.”
At that point, Trump doubted that Putin would attend if he was invited.
The Trump administration is hosting the Miami-based summit in mid-December, billing the meeting as being about “practical solutions, real outcomes, and American leadership that delivers prosperity, security, and strength at home and around the globe.”
Trump has prioritized helping Ukraine and Russia reach a peace agreement during his second presidency, aiming to broker talks between the two sides while maintaining relationships with both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In early September, Trump confirmed he spoke with Putin on the phone about the idea of peace between the two nations, calling it a “great conversation” and adding that he believes the holdup on agreement is because Putin and Zelensky “hate each other.”
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“He is wanting to make a deal,” Trump said. “And if Zelensky is wanting to make a deal, that would be very nice.”
This week, Trump met with Zelensky in a bilateral meeting at the UN General Assembly in New York. Zelensky said that he hopes “President Trump will help us end this war” and added that he hopes to see it come to an end “before winter.”
