• Rubio says progress has been made on peace deal with Russia.
• Umerov leads Ukraine’s delegation after Yermak’s resignation.
• Kushner, Witkoff also present for Florida round of negotiations.

US and Ukrainian officials held what both sides called productive talks on Sunday about a peace deal with Russia, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressing optimism about progress despite challenges in ending the more than 3-year-long war.

“We continue to be realistic about how difficult this is, but optimistic, particularly given the fact that as we’ve made progress, I think there is a shared vision here that this is not just about ending the war … it is about securing Ukraine’s future, a future that we hope will be more prosperous than it’s ever been,” Rubio said in Florida, where the talks were being held.

Rubio said the aim is to create a pathway that leaves Ukraine sovereign and independent. The discussions follow roughly two weeks of negotiations that began with a US blueprint for peace. Critics said the plan initially favoured Russia, which started the Ukraine conflict with a 2022 invasion.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were also present representing the US side. Witkoff is expected to meet Russian counterparts later this week.

“There are a lot of moving parts, and obviously there’s another party involved here that will have to be a part of the equation, and that will continue later this week, when Mr Witkoff travels to Moscow,” Rubio said.

Trump has expressed frustration at not being able to end the war. He pledged as a presidential candidate to do so in one day and has said he was surprised it has been so hard, given what he calls a strong relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has largely resisted concessions to stop the fighting.

Trump’s team has pressured Ukraine to make significant concessions itself, including giving up territory to Russia.

The talks shifted on Sunday with a change in leadership from the Ukrainian side. A new chief negotiator, national security council secretary Rustem Umerov, led the talks for Kyiv after the resignation on Friday of previous team leader Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, amid a corruption scandal at home.

As the meeting began, Umerov thanked the United States and its officials for their support. “US is hearing us, US is supporting us, US is walking beside us,” Umerov said in English.

After the meeting, he declared the talks productive. “We discussed all the important matters that are important for Ukraine, for the Ukrainian people, and the US was super supportive,” Umerov said.

The Sunday talks took place near Miami at a private club, Shell Bay, developed by Witkoff’s real estate business.

Zelenskiy had said he expected the results from previous meetings in Geneva would be “hammered out” on Sunday. In Geneva, Ukraine presented a counteroffer to proposals laid out by US Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll to leaders in Kyiv some two weeks ago.

Ukraine’s leadership, facing a domestic political crisis fueled by a probe into major graft in the energy sector, is seeking to push back on Moscow-friendly terms as Russian forces grind forward along the front lines of the war.

Last week, Zelenskiy warned Ukrainians, who are weathering widespread blackouts from Russian air strikes on the energy system, that his country was at its most difficult moment yet, but pledged not to make a bad deal.

“As a weatherman would say, there’s the inherent difficulty in forecasting because the atmosphere is a chaotic system where small changes can lead to large outcomes,” Kyiv’s first deputy foreign minister, Sergiy Kyslytsya, also part of the delegation, wrote on X from Miami on Sunday.

Iran and Turkiye have agreed to begin constructing a new joint rail link to serve as a strategic gateway between Asia and Europe, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday.

The planned route, known in Iran as the Marand-Cheshmeh Soraya railway transit line and running towards Turkiye’s Aralik border region, will cover around 200 kilometres (120 miles).

It will cost roughly $1.6 billion and is expected to take three to four years to complete, Iranian authorities have said.

Earlier this month, Iran’s transport minister Farzaneh Sadegh said the rail line would transform the southern section of what was once the Silk Road into an “all-rail corridor ensuring the continuity of the network between China and Europe”.

It would also ensure “fast and cheap transport of all types of cargo with minimal stops”, she added.

At a joint press conference on Saturday with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, Araghchi said “emphasis was placed on the need to remove barriers to trade and investment between the two countries”.

“The two countries also stressed the importance of the rail link […] in the region and expressed hope that the construction of this line can start as soon as possible,” he added.

The ancient Silk Road was a vast system of trade routes that for centuries linked East Asia to the Middle East and Europe, facilitating the flow of goods, culture and knowledge across continents.

In 2013, China announced the construction of the “Belt and Road Initiative”, officially known as the “New Silk Road”— a project that aims to build maritime, road, and rail infrastructure to boost global trade.

Iran has been seeking to expand infrastructure and trade with neighbouring countries as part of efforts to revitalise an economy strained by decades of international sanctions.

In March 2020, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was speaking at a dinner event about his favourite South Sydney Rabbitohs — a rugby league team — when he heard Jodie Haydon call out, “Up the Rabbitohs.”

Albanese introduced himself after that encounter, but the real step forward came from Haydon. She later reached out to the premier on X, with a “hey, we’re both single”.

The Woodford Folk Festival event at Young Henry’s brewery in Newtown became the place of their first proper meeting, where Haydon had been invited by the Australian PM.

The couple found the Covid 19 as an opportunity to know each other and gave them room to grow their relationship.

The couple suddenly came under the spotlight after their pictures were dropped on social media, which their close friends described as a friendly relationship.

Albanese was involved in a serious car accident in 2021, after which Haydon said in an interview that she realised she loved him.

The Australian PM proposed to his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day 2024, saying he had found a partner “who I want to spend the rest of my life with”.

Following a year of dating, they tied the knot with Jodie Haydon in a private ceremony held in his office.

Albanese planned the proposal date, location, and even designed a custom diamond ring by Cerrone Jewellers in his electorate, Leichhardt.

Haydon was born in 1979, grew up to her grandparents in Avoca.

She spent her childhood in Avoca, bonding with her grandparents and juggling netball, part-time work at a fish-and-chip shop, and studies at Kincumber High before her family relocated to Sydney, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Although she belonged to a family of educators, Haydon viewed herself as a “powerhouse in her own right.”