US Invites Putin to December G20 Summit at Trump's Own Golf Club in Doral

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Wednesday, September 23, that the United States has formally invited Vladimir Putin to the G20 leaders summit scheduled for December 14-15 in Doral, Florida.

"We've invited President Putin to the G20," Rubio said after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, according to RFE/RL. "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."

The summit will be held at Trump National Doral, the golf club Trump personally owns. The New Republic pointed out Trump tried something similar in 2020 with the G7 before that event was scrapped over COVID amid criticism about a sitting president profiting from hosting a global summit at his own property. That criticism is likely to resurface now that Doral is set to host world leaders again.

If Putin shows up, it would be his first G20 leaders summit in person since 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He attended one session virtually in 2023 but has skipped the in-person gatherings since the war began. Russia remains a G20 member.

Rubio said Trump remains willing to sit down with Putin directly but wants any meeting to produce something concrete. "The ideal would be a meeting in which there will be a result, an outcome," Rubio said, according to Pravda.com.ua's translation of his remarks, adding that "a lot of work has to go into it beforehand."

Trump himself was less certain a day earlier. Asked by reporters on September 22 about a possible three-way meeting with Putin and Zelenskyy in Miami, Trump said, according to TASS, "I don't know. I know that he'll meet, and we've had a meeting already in Alaska. I think he'd do another one. I don't know about Miami." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov separately said any Trump-Putin summit would need preparatory work before it could happen.

RBC Ukraine reported that Bloomberg has said Putin plans to attend the APEC summit in China on November 18-19, and that his attendance at the Miami G20 was considered unlikely by comparison.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he's willing to go to Miami and meet Putin face to face if he's there. "We have to come. We have to meet, to speak and make decisions," he told Deutsche Welle, as reported by The Guardian. "It's not about words... Results matter. That's it." Zelenskyy was scheduled to address the UN General Assembly later Wednesday.

The invitation lands as the Trump administration pushes a narrower proposal: a limited ceasefire covering strikes on energy infrastructure. Rubio said U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have discussed the idea with both Moscow and Kyiv. "It doesn't solve the war," Rubio said, per RFE/RL, but he argued it could reduce the war's toll and open a path to broader talks.

Lavrov, speaking later at a UN Security Council session, made clear Russia isn't backing off militarily during any diplomacy. "We will not pause the special military operation," he said, according to RFE/RL.

Ukraine and European allies have reason to be uneasy about elevating Putin's status this way. European officials were already frustrated in August when Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was invited to a G20 finance ministers meeting and refused to join the group photo, according to The Guardian. A leaders-level appearance by Putin himself at a summit hosted on American soil at a property Trump owns comes as Ukraine and EU governments have accused Russia of hybrid attacks meant to rattle Kyiv's allies.

Rubio's framing is that isolating Putin hasn't ended the war, and engaging him directly might. "If you only meet with people that you agree with, then these are very nice meetings, but nothing happens," he said. "In order to solve problems, you have to meet with people that you disagree with." Whether this diplomatic approach produces results or just a photo-op at Trump's golf club will become clear over time.

One legal wrinkle nobody in these accounts addressed directly: the International Criminal Court has an outstanding warrant tied to Putin, covering war crimes—specifically the unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied Ukraine to Russia. The United States is not a party to the ICC's Rome Statute, so Washington has no legal obligation to act on that warrant if Putin sets foot in Florida. Whether Putin actually travels to Doral, or opts for Beijing's APEC summit instead as Bloomberg has reported, remains unresolved heading into December.