By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-09-26 19:16:42 | Updated at 2026-09-26 20:23:21
1 hour ago
Fourteen senators are pressing President Donald Trump over reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to the Group of 20 leaders’ summit in Miami in December.
The
letterwas released on Friday. It asks Trump to rescind
the invitationand keep sanctioned Russian officials out of remaining G20 events on U.S. soil.
“We write to express our serious concern regarding reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to attend the Group of Twenty (G20) Leaders’ Summit on December 14 and 15 in Miami, Florida,” the senators wrote Trump.
They said they want the administration to rescind the invitation and do the same for other sanctioned officials headed to the Trade Ministerial, the Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, and the leaders’ gathering itself, “until Russia agrees to a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”
Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and John Cornyn (R-Texas) are named among the 14 bipartisan lawmakers.
“President Putin bears sole responsibility for launching Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine,” they wrote. “Allowing him to participate in a G20 Summit in the United States raises serious concerns about legitimizing and normalizing a government that continues to attack Ukrainian civilian targets every day.”
The letter goes further than
Ukraine, citing public reports that Russia has helped Iran’s military target American service members in the Middle East. It also highlights a perceived rise in Russian hybrid warfare across Europe and continued aerial strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.
They note that Putin and Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov are sanctioned under Executive Order 14024. So are others traveling with the G20 delegations.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed the leaders’ invitation Wednesday, after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the U.N. General Assembly.
“We’ve invited President Putin to the G20. 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 summit is set for Dec. 14–15 at Trump National Doral Golf Club in Miami. The United States holds the G20 presidency through the end of the year.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Russia “grateful and appreciative for this invitation.”
“We will make a decision and work through it via diplomatic channels,” Peskov said.
He said the two leaders have made it clear they are willing to meet again.
“Presidents Putin and Trump always emphasize in their telephone conversations their readiness to hold another meeting at some point, if necessary,” Peskov said, according to Russian state-owned news agency TASS.
Trump told reporters Tuesday he thought Putin would discuss a peace deal. U.S. envoys have held talks in Moscow and Kyiv this year, and no deal has been made.
The senators praised the president’s
sanctions regimeagainst Russia, and then turned their focus to the upcoming summit.
“We commend your signing of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which gives you additional tools to hold the Putin regime accountable,” they wrote. Trump signed that bill on Sept. 18.
“However, if President Putin and his government are not isolated on the international stage, what incentive does Russia have to agree to a ceasefire?”
Russia was never dropped from the G20, even after it was suspended from what became the G7 in 2014.
Putin has skipped the annual G20 gatherings in person since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He last set foot in the United States in August 2025, when he met Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, marking his first trip onto U.S. soil since 2015.
In April, a senior Trump administration official said Moscow would be invited to the ministerial meetings and the leaders’ summit, though no formal invitations had gone out then.
“No formal invitations have been issued at this time,” the official said on April 24. “But Russia is a G20 member and will be invited to attend ministerial meetings and the leaders’ summit.”
Trump, asked earlier that week whether Putin would come, sounded unsure.
“I don’t know that he’s coming. I doubt he’d come, to be honest with you,” he
told reporters April 23. “If he came, it would probably be very helpful. I’m of the opinion that you talk to everybody.”
In September 2025, Trump had not yet decided if he would invite Putin.
“No, I haven’t thought of that. It’s an interesting question. I want to think about that for a little while,” he said when asked if Russia would get an invitation.
