The United States has proposed hosting Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Miami next week while setting an ambitious June deadline for ending the nearly four-year conflict, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The announcement marks a significant escalation in American diplomatic engagement on the war.
Speaking to reporters in comments made public early Saturday, Zelensky revealed that this would be the first time the US has offered to host direct negotiations between the two warring parties on American territory. The selection of Miami as the venue and the establishment of a June timeline demonstrate Washington’s determination to facilitate a rapid resolution to the conflict that has caused enormous humanitarian and economic damage globally.
This upcoming round of negotiations would follow two previous US-mediated sessions held in Abu Dhabi since January. Those earlier talks achieved a notable success with a major prisoner exchange but made no headway on the central territorial questions that divide Ukraine and Russia. Moscow currently occupies roughly 20 percent of Ukrainian land and is demanding formal control over additional territory in the strategically vital Donetsk region as part of any peace agreement.
Ukrainian authorities have firmly and repeatedly rejected Russian territorial demands, maintaining that sovereign territory cannot be bargained away regardless of military pressures. Russia has characterized its territorial requirements as essential to any settlement and has warned it will pursue military options if negotiations do not yield satisfactory territorial concessions. This fundamental disagreement on borders continues to obstruct progress toward peace despite intensive international mediation efforts.
The push for peace comes even as combat operations persist. Zelensky announced on Saturday that Russian forces had struck infrastructure critical to Ukraine’s nuclear power facilities the previous night. The attacks forced multiple nuclear reactor units to reduce their power generation, and one unit underwent an automatic emergency shutdown. Zelensky described the strikes as terrorism on a scale never before attempted and called for strong international condemnation while urging Russia to show genuine commitment to the ongoing negotiation process.