By Jeff Mason
HALLANDALE BEACH, Florida, Nov 30 (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday he expected talks with Ukrainian officials to yield “more progress” toward a deal to end the war in Ukraine.
“This is not just about peace deals. It’s about creating a pathway forward that leaves Ukraine sovereign, independent and prosperous and so we expect to make even more progress today,” Rubio said in Hallandale Beach, Florida, where talks were taking place.
Ukraine’s delegation was led by a new chief negotiator, national security council secretary Rustem Umerov, after the resignation on Friday of previous team leader Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, amid a corruption scandal at home.
As the meeting began, Umerov thanked the United States and its officials. “U.S. is hearing us, U.S. is supporting us, U.S. is walking besides us,” Umerov said in English.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were also present to represent the U.S. side. The talks took place near Miami at a private club, Shell Bay, developed by Witkoff’s real estate business.
Zelenskiy has said he expects the results of previous meetings in Geneva would be “hammered out” on Sunday. In Geneva, Ukraine presented a counter-offer to proposals laid out by U.S. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll to leaders in Kyiv some two weeks ago.
“As a weatherman would say, there’s the inherent difficulty in forecasting because the atmosphere is a chaotic system where small changes can lead to large outcomes,” Kyiv’s first deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, also part of the delegation, wrote on X from Miami on Sunday.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason in Hallandale Beach, Florida; additional reporting by Jasper Ward, Dan Peleschuk and Max Hunder; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Sergio Non)
