EditPutin invited at G20 in Miami: Thank you but no?
Zelenskyy for his part said he would come to Moscow “on a rocket”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia is “grateful and appreciative” for the U.S. invitation to President Vladimir Putin to attend the G20 summit in Miami in December, adding that Moscow will decide through diplomatic channels. He did not alter Russia’s earlier position that a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy there is “impossible.”
The invitation was announced on 23 September by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in New York. Rubio said the summit would give Putin a chance to engage with President Donald Trump and other leaders, and that Washington hoped he would accept.
Eleven days earlier, Zelenskyy had told Deutsche Welle he would travel to Miami if Putin attended: “We have to meet, to speak and make decisions. Results matter.”
Peskov rejected that idea the same day, repeating that Putin would meet Zelenskyy only in Moscow. That stance has not changed since the U.S. invitation. Putin has not attended a G20 summit in person since 2019. Whether he goes to Miami remains undecided.
Asked by a Russian state journalist at the UN General Assembly in New York when he would come to Moscow, Zelenskyy replied in Russian: “On a rocket.” The remark, captured on video as he walked past reporters from Vesti, was a sarcastic rejection of the Kremlin’s long-standing demand that any meeting with Putin take place only in the Russian capital.
WATCH: Russian reporters shout at Zelensky:
When will you go to Moscow?
His reply:
On a rocket! pic.twitter.com/kOLqAsz8m1
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 23, 2026
These exchanges leave little room for an early face-to-face meeting. Without a change in that standoff, a direct Putin-Zelenskyy encounter – widely seen as a necessary step toward any truce – looks unlikely in the coming months.
Caption: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov photographed at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, 9 September 2026. To Lam is on a three-day state visit to Russia. EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV / POOL
Updated: September 24, 2026 - 08:30
