“Yes, of course. We have to come. We have to meet, to speak and make decisions.”
Zelensky made clear that, in his view, the substance of a potential meeting would ultimately be measured by what comes afterward—not by the rhetoric exchanged across the negotiating table.
“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.”
That declaration could carry significant weight if Putin ultimately accepts an invitation to attend the gathering personally.
The 2026 G20 Leaders’ Summit is scheduled for December 14–15 at Trump National Doral Miami, with the United States holding the presidency of the influential international group. Washington has previously indicated that Putin is expected to be invited.
For the first time in years, that could create an unusual diplomatic setting in which the Russian and Ukrainian presidents could potentially be brought together at the same international event.
However, Moscow is already pushing back against the idea of a Putin-Zelensky meeting in Miami.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the prospect of the two leaders meeting on the sidelines of the summit, describing such an encounter as “impossible.”
At the same time, Peskov said Moscow remains open to another possibility.
There was “a readiness to meet him in Moscow,” Peskov said, reiterating the Kremlin’s position when questioned about whether another location could be considered.
Another senior Russian official also sought to cool expectations surrounding Putin’s possible attendance.
Yuri Ushakov, a foreign-policy aide to Putin, said the question of whether the Russian president would travel to the G20 summit “has not even been discussed.”
That leaves a major question hanging over the December meeting: Will Putin actually appear in Miami?
Russia has maintained a diplomatic presence at G20-related events even as Putin has largely stayed away from the leaders’ gatherings. Russia’s finance minister attended a G20 meeting in North Carolina the previous month, while Russian representatives were also expected to participate in a later energy meeting in Houston.
Putin, however, has not personally attended a G20 leaders’ summit since 2019.
The possibility of a Zelensky-Putin encounter comes as American diplomatic efforts surrounding the war have gained renewed momentum.
U.S. special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner traveled to Moscow before heading to Kyiv earlier in September. Zelensky characterized their visit to the Ukrainian capital as a “good sign,” suggesting that Kyiv sees continued American involvement as potentially important to future negotiations.
Zelensky also claimed that Ukraine now enters negotiations from a stronger position than it did one year ago.
He pointed to what he described as substantial Russian battlefield losses, estimating that Russia is suffering more than 30,000 personnel losses per month.
Those figures are a Ukrainian estimate and have not been independently established here, but Zelensky clearly intends to use them to argue that Moscow may have greater incentive to pursue an agreement.
Rather than immediately attempting to solve every aspect of the conflict, Zelensky suggested that negotiations could begin with narrower agreements.
One possibility he raised was a ceasefire covering energy infrastructure and grain-related activities.
Such an agreement, he suggested, could potentially become the first step toward a much broader diplomatic process.
The road to an actual Putin-Zelensky meeting, however, remains extremely uncertain.
The two presidents have not met face-to-face since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Their only in-person meeting as presidents took place on December 9, 2019, in Paris.
That meeting occurred during a Normandy Format summit involving Putin, Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Nearly seven years later, the prospect of the two men appearing at the same international summit would represent a dramatic change from the current diplomatic landscape.
Zelensky appears prepared to take the opportunity if it materializes. The Kremlin, meanwhile, is signaling that Miami is not an acceptable venue for such a confrontation—and that Putin’s attendance at the summit itself has not yet been decided.
For now, the most consequential question may not be whether Zelensky is willing to meet Putin.
He has already answered that.
The real question is whether Putin will show up.
