United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted an emergency high-stakes meeting with a senior Ukrainian delegation on Sunday at a secure venue in Hallandale Beach, Florida, in a bold push to force a breakthrough in the nearly four-year Russia-Ukraine war. Present alongside Rubio were President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and senior advisor Jared Kushner, signalling the direct involvement of the White House inner circle. Opening the session, Rubio declared that Washington seeks not merely an armistice but a comprehensive settlement that guarantees Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity within realistic boundaries, and long-term economic prosperity.

Heading the Ukrainian team was Rustem Umerov, Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council, who maintained constant encrypted communication with President Volodymyr Zelensky throughout the closed-door talks. Umerov told reporters the discussions centred on iron-clad security guarantees, massive reconstruction funding, prevention of future Russian aggression, and the immediate lifting of battlefield pressure on Ukrainian forces currently facing relentless advances in Donetsk and Kursk.

The core of the negotiations is a heavily revised American peace framework that replaced an earlier 28-point draft widely condemned by Kyiv and European capitals for effectively rewarding Moscow’s land grabs. While the new version drops explicit recognition of annexed territories, it still reportedly imposes strict caps on the future size of Ukraine’s military, postpones NATO membership for at least fifteen years, mandates internationally supervised elections in occupied zones, and requires Kyiv to accept neutrality clauses similar to those imposed on Austria in 1955.

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The timing adds extraordinary pressure on Kyiv: only 48 hours earlier, Zelensky dismissed his influential chief of staff and chief negotiator Andriy Yermak over a corruption probe, leaving the Ukrainian side temporarily weakened. Simultaneously, Russian drone swarms struck the Kyiv region for the second consecutive night, killing one civilian and injuring more than a dozen, while Ukrainian naval drones successfully paralysed Russia’s largest Black Sea oil terminal, escalating economic warfare on both sides.

With Witkoff scheduled to fly to Moscow next week and President Zelensky meeting French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday, the Florida talks have effectively become a pivotal 48-hour window. Sources close to the delegation indicate that Washington has made clear it expects concrete commitments from Kyiv before any direct engagement with the Kremlin, raising the stakes for a deal that could either end Europe’s bloodiest conflict in decades or fracture transatlantic unity.

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