Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that the U.S. invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to the G20 summit in Miami this December, after Rubio spoke with another Russian official on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday.
“We’ve invited President Putin to the G20,” Rubio told reporters. “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.”
If Putin goes to the summit in December, it will mark the first time he has attended the geopolitical meeting in person since 2019. Russia has maintained its status as a G20 member nation throughout the country’s four-year-long war with Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces recently launched aggressive strikes against Russian oil refineries, and The Financial Times reported that Trump urged Zelenskyy over the weekend to halt the attacks in order to ease global strain on gas and diesel prices — a crisis that has been compounded by the Iran war and the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz.
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Rubio said that both Russia and Ukraine are interested in a limited ceasefire.
“Both sides have expressed an interest in some limited ceasefire that involved grain and energy. Obviously, you know, that won’t be easy either,” Rubio said.
Rubio reportedly spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday to extend the invitation for December. The invitation comes days after Trump signed a sweeping bipartisan Russian sanctions bill aimed at increasing economic pressure on Moscow over its war in Ukraine.
Multiple Senate Republicans criticized the Trump administration’s decision to publicly call for Putin to attend the G20 summit.
“Putin should not be invited to [the] G20 summit,” Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts, who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, told The Washington Sun. “He is prosecuting a war in Ukraine right now, and we should treat him like the dictator he is.”
Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, chair of Senate Armed Services Committee, said he “wouldn’t have done it,” while Texas Sen. John Cornyn called the invitation a “bad idea.”
Sen. Todd Young said an invitation would make sense only if Putin were prepared to make major concessions.
“I think elevating Vladimir Putin is not where we should be focused right now,” the Indiana Republican said. “We should be trying to come up with ways to bring him to the table for a serious negotiation.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), who championed the sanctions bill alongside the late Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, called the invitation “absolutely disgraceful, despicable.”
“I’m hoping for tougher action and expecting it because he signed the bill and supported it.” Blumenthal told The Washington Sun.
Rubio’s announcement “makes clear the administration has no intention of isolating Russia for its war of aggression in Ukraine,” Democrats from the House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote in an X post Wednesday.
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