Marco Rubio and Sergey Lavrov met in New York as the United States seeks to reach a peace agreement for Ukraine

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met on Wednesday in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, as the United States seeks to negotiate an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine. The talks took place on the same day that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a speech at the UN.

The meeting was held at a hotel in New York, and the two officials did not answer journalists’ questions. Among the issues under discussion was the possibility of introducing a moratorium on attacks against energy infrastructure.

The U.S.-Russian diplomatic contact came after Zelenskyy met with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss peace efforts. According to a statement published by the Ukrainian leader, Washington and Kyiv want the war to end before winter through de-escalation measures that would allow diplomacy to resume.

Meanwhile, Russia attacked Kyiv with drones that same morning, striking railway infrastructure, warehouses, and gas stations. Zelenskyy said he had conveyed to Trump Ukraine’s willingness to halt attacks on Russian energy facilities, provided that Moscow does the same in Ukraine. The Ukrainian president said that such an energy moratorium had been discussed during the meeting with the U.S. leader.