United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that Washington has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to December’s G20 meeting in Miami amid efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Following a meeting with Russian Foreign Secretary Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, Rubio said the US remained open to speaking with Moscow about Ukraine.
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“We’ve just invited President Putin to the G20. 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,” Rubio said.
Trump and Putin last met, face to face, in Anchorage, Alaska, in August 2025, but failed to reach any agreement over Ukraine. Putin has not visited the contiguous United States since he invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Here’s what we know.
What is the G20?
The G20, or Group of 20, is a forum bringing together the world’s major and emerging economies. A summit is held annually – this year in Miami, Florida, in the US.
Those countries or groups of countries are:
- Argentina
- Australia
- Brazil
- Canada
- China
- France
- Germany
- India
- Indonesia
- Italy
- Japan
- Mexico
- Russia
- Saudi Arabia
- South Africa
- South Korea
- Turkiye
- United Kingdom
- United States
- African Union
- European Union
While many G20 countries, such as Germany, France, and the UK, are allied with Ukraine, others have closer ties with Russia – including China and India.
If he accepts the invitation, it would be Putin’s first in-person attendance at a G20 summit since 2019.
In 2021, the Russian leader attended the G20 summit virtually and spoke by video feed, but in 2023, when the summit was held in India, Putin sent Lavrov in his place.
What has Russia said?
On Thursday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said no decision had been taken about Putin’s attendance at the December summit.
When asked what the two leaders might discuss, Peskov told reporters, “It is premature to speak about this right now.”
“No decision has been made yet. We certainly appreciate this kind invitation, we value it, and it will be reviewed and coordinated, after which an appropriate decision will be reached.”
The spokesperson reiterated that Russia is seeking a peace settlement, not a temporary ceasefire.
How are US-Russian relations?
While the US maintains contact with Moscow for dialogue over the war in Ukraine, relations between the countries are strained.
Last week, Trump signed the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026 into law, which grants the president sweeping powers to sanction buyers of Russian energy, in a bid to pressure Moscow to end the war.
The legislation, named after the late hawkish Republican lawmaker, also sanctions President Vladimir Putin, senior officials and oligarchs, along with Russian banks and financial institutions.
However, this week, Trump appeared to contradict this approach when he called on Ukraine to agree to an “energy truce” with Russia whereby both sides stop launching strikes on each other’s energy facilities and infrastructure. In comments to reporters at the UN headquarters, Zelenskyy said Kyiv would halt strikes on Russian energy facilities if Moscow stopped targeting Ukraine’s energy systems, as well.
Trump has blamed the Ukraine-Russia war for the current record rise in diesel prices in the United States, which has become a major issue as the country approaches midterm elections in November, adding that Ukraine’s strikes on Russian diesel facilities were “hurting the world”.
But observers said Trump is placing pressure on the wrong actor in the war.
“It is Russia’s – not Ukraine’s – responsibility to end the attacks,” Marnie Howlett, an associate professor of international relations in Eastern Europe and Eurasia at the University of Oxford, told Al Jazeera. “The Russian Federation has repeatedly broken ceasefire agreements, so the war will continue until it agrees to recognise Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.”
“The ongoing sales of Russian fossil fuels continue to finance Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Amanda Paul, senior policy analyst at the European Policy Centre (EPC), said.
“Rather than putting the emphasis on the impact of Ukrainian strikes on fuel prices, Trump should be putting greater pressure on Russia to end its attacks and bring the war to an end,” she said. “Trump himself is responsible for stoking high energy prices, due to the repercussions of the US-Israel war on Iran and the subsequent blocking of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Was the G20 invitation for Putin expected this year?
Last month, US media reported that the head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Ratcliffe, travelled to Moscow for unannounced talks.
According to CBS News, news of his trip came only after an Air Force Boeing C-17 Globemaster III transport plane was spotted flying into a Moscow airport.
While the CIA did not comment on his trip, Peskov told reporters in Moscow that Ratcliffe had spoken to Russian intelligence officials, but did not meet Putin. Then, a senior Ukrainian official told CBS that Washington had told Ukraine that a US delegation would be travelling to Moscow and asked Kyiv to pause its attacks until the delegation left.
On Wednesday, citing two sources familiar with the matter, the Reuters news agency reported that Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev would go to the US to meet special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
According to one source, the visit aims to keep Russia-US dialogue and peacekeeping efforts going. Economic cooperation, energy issues and a peace settlement in Ukraine will also be on the agenda.
Will Putin’s visit trigger the International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for his arrest?
No.
In March 2023, the ICC issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest for the alleged war crime of unlawfully deporting Ukrainian children to Russia.
Under the Rome Statute, the international treaty that established the ICC, signatories are obliged to carry out the warrant if a person with a warrant for their arrest enters their territory.
However, the US is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and will therefore not abide by it. Furthermore, the Trump administration is reported to be preparing sanctions against the ICC, which has also issued a warrant for the arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on suspicion of war crimes in Gaza. The US has previously also placed sanctions on ICC officials.
The new US sanctions would prohibit most transactions with the ICC after a grace period of six to seven months, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. If imposed, the measures would bar US citizens and companies from providing the ICC with money, goods or services without a licence from the US Department of the Treasury. Banks and other companies often take an especially cautious approach to US sanctions because they rely on access to the US financial system.
On Thursday, Trump urged all countries that are members of the ICC to quit and said it was “out of control”.
“The United States is equally opposed to the out-of-control institution known as the International Criminal Court,” he told the United Nations General Assembly. “I call on all nations that are members of the ICC to officially resign from this rogue institution immediately.”
How have other countries responded to Putin’s invitation to the G20?
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, criticised the invitation and said she would raise it with other members of the G20.
“We need to discuss this together with colleagues, but it’s clearly, I think, the wrong path to normalise people who are starting wars, who are going against the UN charter, who are killing and giving orders to kill civilians, to ignore the international humanitarian law, to cause as much damage and suffering to people that they can,” she added.
“By normalising this, believe me, we will have more of it around the world.”
On Thursday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a Ukraine ally, said inviting Putin to the Miami summit could encourage Moscow to continue its attacks on Ukraine.
“If inviting Putin to the G20 could bring us closer to a just peace, I would be absolutely in favour of it,” Tusk told a news conference.
“However – and this is both my concern and what my experience tells me – at this stage, Russia might well view it as an encouragement to continue its aggressive policies. That is what I fear.”
