Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that President Donald Trump had invited President Vladimir Putin of Russia to attend the Group of 20 leadership summit in Miami in December, in what would mark Putin’s first in-person appearance at the annual gathering since 2019.

Rubio added that Trump would speak with Putin in Miami if he accepted the invitation. Trump last met with the Russian leader in August 2025 at a summit in Alaska.

Since then their relations have been cool, as Putin has proved less willing to strike a deal to end his war in Ukraine than Trump had hoped.

“We think it’s an opportunity for him to engage not just with the president but with other world leaders,” Rubio told reporters on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York.

The Kremlin did not immediately publicly respond to the invitation.

Many G20 leaders are unlikely to welcome Putin at the event, to be held at the Trump National Doral Golf Club. When Russia’s finance minister attended a gathering of his G20 counterparts in Asheville, North Carolina, last month at the invitation of the Trump administration, his presence drew European protests. He was excluded from the customary “family photo” of ministers in attendance.

Germany’s finance minister, Lars Klingbeil, called the presence of the Russian official, Anton Siluanov, “a signal I find troubling,” given Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine.

Russia was suspended in 2014 from the more elite Group of 7, previously known as the Group of 8, after Putin annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. But Russia remains a member of the Group of 20, an organization of advanced and developing nations whose leaders meet annually to discuss global economic issues.

Putin has skipped the G20’s recent gatherings, first because of the coronavirus pandemic and then after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 drew widespread condemnation. More junior Russian officials have attended the gatherings in his stead.

Putin did join a 2021 G20 meeting held virtually, and spoke by video feed at one session of its 2023 summit in Bali.

While the G20 includes many Western nations allied with Ukraine, its ranks also include several nations that have friendly ties with Moscow, including China, India, Turkey and South Africa.

Trump has long opposed Putin’s international isolation and has often spoken of the Russian leader with respect and admiration, though less so as it has become clear that Putin is unwilling to make concessions with Ukraine. Among other things, Trump has called for restoring Russia’s membership in the Group of 7.

Before meeting with Trump in Alaska in 2025, Putin was last in the United States in 2015 for the annual U.N. gathering in New York, where he met on the sidelines with President Barack Obama.

As a senator before he joined the Trump administration, Rubio was a strong advocate of shunning Putin. He called the Russian leader a war criminal who could not be trusted in negotiations. Since becoming Trump’s national security adviser and secretary of state, Rubio has defended Trump’s call for dialogue with Putin.

Rubio also met Wednesday with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, on the margins of the U.N. gathering. On Tuesday, Rubio joined Trump in a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.

“Ultimately, we all want this war to end,” Rubio told reporters Wednesday, adding that only a “negotiated agreement” could stop the fighting.

“The sooner we can reach that agreement, the less things will be destroyed, and the less people are going to die on both sides. That’s what the president wants,” he said.

Rubio also said that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, was expected to attend the Miami summit. He added that in mid-November, Trump planned to visit southern China for an economic summit of Asian leaders, and would meet with Xi in the city of Shenzhen.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Edward Wong and Michael Crowley/Doug Mills
c. 2026 The New York Times Company