US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner attend a meeting with Ukrainian officials in Florida on Sunday. Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images

Inside the Witkoff Group’s exclusive Shell Bay private members club in South Florida, the delegations from Washington and Kyiv faced each other for “tough but very constructive” negotiations over lashings of Ukrainian Borsch, a beetroot and cabbage soup which one attendee told me was “very rich with meat.”

But its serving, along with Holubtsi, traditional meat and cabbage rolls, was seen as a welcome nod to Ukrainian culture – a deft diplomatic gesture as the US tries to coax Ukraine towards compromising on a peace deal with Russia.

A source with direct knowledge of the Florida talks – involving U

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