Trump invites Putin to G20 summit

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 24: President Donald Trump has invited his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to attend the G20 summit of world leaders in Miami in December, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday.

The move comes as Washington struggles to secure a deal to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Trump insisting that he is working with both sides to stop the war.

“In order to solve problems, you have to meet with the people that you disagree with or the people that you might have some issues with,” Rubio told reporters in New York on Wednesday.

“So, we’ve invited President Putin to the G20,” he added.

“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,” Rubio said.

The top US diplomat spoke shortly after his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a hotel in New York.

Their meeting also comes ahead of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s scheduled address to the United Nations. He is expected to appeal again for better air defences against the barrage of Russian drones and missiles.

But yesterday, Lavrov told the UN Security Council that Moscow would not halt its war of more than four years against Ukraine.

“We are not going to have a pause in our special military operation,” Lavrov said, accusing Europe of wanting to use a halt to the fighting to “pump the Kyiv regime with weapons.”

Rubio also encouraged Moscow and Kyiv to reach an energy ceasefire. While this does not end the war, it could create a platform for broader agreement, he noted.

Rubio said both sides have expressed interest in a limited ceasefire involving energy.

On the ground, Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure across Ukraine killed at least seven people yesterday, including two in Kyiv.

Kyiv officials said more than 40 people were wounded in a wave of strikes which hit gas stations, offices, a college building, businesses and the rail network, while the internet was cut to some 100,000 households.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, at least four people were killed, including a young child, when a residential building was hit in Oleksandrivka in the eastern Donbas region that has been the epicentre of the fighting.

In Ukraine’s southern Black Sea port of Odesa, the captain of a cargo ship was killed in a Russian attack -- part of a wave of strikes from both sides on commercial vessels designed to hit export revenues. 

The head of the Odesa region, Oleg Kiper, said the vessel was sailing on the Black Sea under the flag of Antigua and Barbuda.�"AFP