MOSCOW, September 13 — Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposal to hold direct talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit, the Kremlin said, closing off the most prominent diplomatic opening of the year. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin has no plans to attend the summit and dismissed the proposal as lacking seriousness. The rejection marks another failed attempt to convene direct negotiations between the two leaders since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022.
Zelensky had publicly proposed that Putin attend the G20 summit as a venue for potential peace discussions. The summit is scheduled for Miami, Florida, with the United States holding the G20 presidency for 2026.
Why the venue mattered
The G20 is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries plus the European Union and the African Union, representing around 85% of global GDP and 75% of international trade. Previous summits were held in Rio de Janeiro in 2024, New Delhi in 2023, and Bali in 2022. Strategically, the calculus behind Zelensky’s offer was straightforward.
A G20 gathering would have placed Putin in a room with the world’s largest economies — and, critically, on US soil, where the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against him carries no legal force. The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute.
The ICC issued that warrant in March 2023, accusing Putin of war crimes related to the deportation of Ukrainian children. It complicates his travel to many countries. Washington’s non-membership of the court would have removed one practical obstacle to his attendance.
Peskov’s dismissal suggests Moscow saw no advantage in testing that.
The last handshake, and the obstacles since
The last known direct talks between Putin and Zelensky occurred in Paris in December 2019, during the Normandy Format summit, which also involved French President Emmanuel Macron and then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Since the 2022 invasion, Zelensky has repeatedly called for direct negotiations with Putin, while the Kremlin has insisted that any talks must recognize “new territorial realities,” referring to Russia’s claimed annexation of four Ukrainian regions in September 2022.
Zelensky has rejected those preconditions, insisting on a full withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. The two positions remain irreconcilable.
The rejection underscores the continued stalemate in diplomatic efforts to end the war, which has now lasted over three years and caused tens of thousands of casualties on both sides. The broader stakes extend well beyond the two capitals. The United States, under the current administration, has provided billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine since 2022 — a commitment that shapes the security calculations of every NATO member and every state watching how Washington sustains a war it does not fight directly.
What this signals is a Kremlin content to wait. Putin’s absence from Miami removes any pressure to engage, and it hands Moscow a free hand to let the diplomatic clock run while its forces hold the ground they occupy.
For the G20 itself, the episode tests whether the forum can function as a diplomatic venue when one of its most consequential members refuses to show up. Other world leaders may still use Miami to push for renewed diplomacy, but they will be doing so without the one person whose presence would matter most.
Watch whether the White House, as host, attempts to keep the Ukraine file alive on the summit’s margins — and whether any intermediary state, from the Gulf to Ankara, tries to revive a channel the Kremlin has now publicly shut.
