Rubio says Trump invited Putin to December G20 summit in Miami
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky used his address to the U.N. General Assembly in New York City on Wednesday to argue that the war Russia launched against his country in 2022 is not contained to Ukraine and poses a widening danger to global stability. Speaking to assembled world leaders, Zelensky framed the conflict as one whose consequences extend well beyond its front lines.
“This ridiculous and never-ending war with Ukraine must be ended,” Zelensky told the General Assembly. “I do not know a single world leader who would say otherwise.”
Zelensky presented a picture of mounting Russian losses, saying the Russian army lost nearly 249,000 people from January to August 2025 on the battlefield in Ukraine — more than the population of many countries. He added that those soldiers “still keep going there to die because that is what Putin wants.”
The Ukrainian president also pointed to what he described as the internationalization of Russia’s war effort. Ukraine, he said, has taken prisoners of war from 47 countries who had been fighting for Russia because of “deception and tricks.” He did not identify the countries in the remarks reported.
Zelensky returned repeatedly to Putin personally, arguing that the Russian president has both the patience and the appetite to expand the conflict. “Putin is always looking for someone who can help him kill more, kill more people for every kilometer of land, take more territory and take another country instead of simply stopping and running his own country,” Zelensky said. “After all of this, can you even imagine him without war?”
He continued: “He is patient, the one from whom this idea of war keeps spreading further. And wherever it spreads, it brings only pain, instability, new risks and, of course, new crises. The more freedom Putin has to act, the more dangerous the war becomes for everyone else.”
Toward the close of his remarks, Zelensky turned to the prospect of artificial intelligence on the battlefield. “We need peace before we reach that point,” he said, referring to a moment “as early as next year” when AI could begin making decisions in combat.
The address came as the United Nations hosted parallel sessions on the war. At a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, Russia offered a sharply different account, blaming Europe and prewar support for Ukraine for its 2022 invasion, The New York Times reported. Russia’s foreign minister said the country “had to” invade Ukraine and start the war because of European leaders’ “anti-Russia campaign.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that President Donald Trump has invited Putin to the December G20 summit in Miami, according to Politico. Rubio characterized the invitation as an opportunity for Putin “to engage … with other world leaders.”
Both the General Assembly speech and the Security Council session took place in New York on the same day. Zelensky’s warning about the war’s potential spread coincided with the U.S. invitation to Putin to attend the G20 summit in Miami in December.