Rubio Says U.S. to Decide in Days if End to War in Ukraine Is ‘Doable’
“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as he departed meetings in Paris.
The United States will abandon efforts to end the war in Ukraine if it proves impossible to broker meaningful progress in the next several days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as he departed Paris on Friday a day after meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France.
“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Mr. Rubio told reporters, adding that the Trump administration would decide “in a matter of days whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks.”
It was not entirely clear from Mr. Rubio’s remarks whether he meant that the United States would merely abandon its effort to reach a 30-day cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine, President Trump’s immediate focus, or abandon Washington’s commitments to Ukraine altogether.
But his remarks ratcheted up pressure on both sides to end the war and appeared intended to inject urgency into European efforts to prod Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, toward compromise.
While the United States is Russia’s chief interlocutor in the negotiations, Europe has far greater sway over Mr. Zelensky. Mr. Trump said on Thursday that he was “not a big fan” of the Ukrainian leader. By contrast, speaking of his relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia during his first term, Mr. Trump said that “I was the apple of his eye.”
Mr. Rubio said Mr. Trump “has spent 87 days at the highest level of this government repeatedly making efforts to bring this war to an end. We are now reaching a point when we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not.”
Responding to Mr. Rubio’s comments, the Kremlin signaled that it was in no hurry for a cease-fire, a consistent message from Moscow throughout Mr. Trump’s attempts to end the war.
High-level talks on Thursday between American, European and Ukrainian officials were the first of their kind, intended to bring “convergence” between views of the war in Washington and European capitals. Mr. Rubio said the conversations had been constructive, but it appeared clear that Mr. Trump was losing patience.
During the talks, a “broad framework” for peace, in effect an American plan, was presented to Ukraine. “It’s a framework that gets us into a position to see — look, there are going to be differences; there’s no — no one’s saying this can be done in 12 hours,” Mr. Rubio said. He declined to give any further details of the proposal.
“It is not our war. We didn’t start it,” Mr. Rubio said. “The United States has been helping Ukraine for the past three years and we want it to end, but it’s not our war.”
He added: “If it’s not possible — if we’re so far apart that this is not going to happen — then I think the president’s probably at a point where he’s going to say, well, we’re done. We’ll do what we can on the margins." He described Mr. Trump as feeling “very strongly” about this.
Mr. Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s envoy, have led the American diplomacy aimed at ending the war, which has festered for more than three years. Mr. Witkoff has met with Mr. Putin multiple times and said he was trying to develop a “friendship, a relationship” with the Russian leader.
But Mr. Putin has balked, setting various conditions even for a 30-day cease-fire. The Russian bombardment of Ukraine continues.
Asked whether Russia planned to respond to a cease-fire offer from Mr. Trump this week, Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said ending the war was “not a simple topic” and that Russia was seeking a settlement that would “ensure its own interests.”
“We are open for dialogue,” Mr. Peskov said. “There are already certain developments, but many difficult discussions lie ahead.”
Mr. Peskov described the one-month moratorium on strikes on energy infrastructure that expired this week as an example of “certain progress.” He said that while the 30-day time frame had expired, Mr. Putin had “not made any other orders,” leaving ambiguous whether that meant the Kremlin would consider the moratorium still in force or would consider it justified to renew military strikes.
Both Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of violating the agreement.
There was no immediate official reaction from Kyiv to Mr. Rubio’s remarks, which appeared jolting after strained efforts on Thursday to demonstrate harmony between American and European approaches to the war.
Mykhailo Samus, the director of the New Geopolitics Research Network in Kyiv, said that an American exit from peace talks would mean an open acknowledgment of Mr. Trump’s “powerlessness regarding the Russia-Ukraine war.”
He added that, “this calls into question the signing of an agreement on strategic resources between the U.S. and Ukraine.”
Ukraine and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding late on Thursday as a “step toward a joint economic partnership agreement,” according to Ukraine’s economy minister, bringing both sides closer to a contentious minerals deal. The deal, if concluded, would make American abandonment of Ukraine appear a remote possibility.
The officials who took part in the Paris talks have agreed to meet next week in London, and Mr. Rubio indicated he might participate, but not if the meeting was just an exercise in further talking. He said he hoped Europeans would remain engaged in the efforts to secure a peace in Ukraine. Mr. Putin’s demands — among them that Ukraine cede territory that Russia has occupied and abandon its attempts to join NATO — have been rejected outright by Ukraine.
“I think the U.K. and France and Germany can help us move the ball on this and then get this closer to a resolution,” Mr. Rubio told reporters at Le Bourget airport as he prepared to depart. “I thought they were very helpful and constructive with their ideas.”
Anton Troianovski and Maria Varenikova contributed reporting.
Roger Cohen is the Paris Bureau chief for The Times, covering France and beyond. He has reported on wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and Ukraine, and between Israel and Gaza, in more than four decades as a journalist. At The Times, he has been a correspondent, foreign editor and columnist."
Trump says he can end the Russia-Ukraine war in one day. Russia’s UN ambassador says he can’t
Trump says he can end the Russia-Ukraine war in one day. Russia’s UN ambassador says he can’t
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Donald Trump has repeatedly said he could settle the war between Russia and Ukraine in one day if he’s elected president again. Russia’s United Nations ambassador says he can’t.
When asked to respond to the claim from the presumptive Republican nominee, Vassily Nebenzia told reporters Monday that “the Ukrainian crisis cannot be solved in one day.”
At a CNN town hall in May 2023, Trump said: “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done — I’ll have that done in 24 hours.” He said that would happen after he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. And he keeps repeating the claim on the campaign trail.
During last week’s debate with President Joe Biden, Trump claimed, “If we had a real president, a president that knew — that was respected by Putin ... he would have never invaded Ukraine.”
Trump campaign’s communications director Steven Cheung said Tuesday that “a top priority in his second term will be to quickly negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.”
“Trump believes European nations should be paying more of the cost of the conflict,” Cheung said.
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Nebenzia said the war could have ended in April 2022 in Istanbul when Russia and Ukraine were “very close” to an agreement. Moscow invaded its neighbor two months earlier on Feb. 24, 2022, though Russia insists its “special military operation” began in 2014 after clashes in Ukraine’s east resulted in Moscow seizing the Crimea Peninsula.
The Russian ambassador blamed Ukraine’s Western backers for blocking the April 2022 peace deal and telling Kyiv to keep fighting Russia.
Now, he said, Zelenskyy “is running around with his so-called peace plan which, of course, is not a peace plan but a joke.” While meeting in Switzerland last month, nearly 80 countries called for the “territorial integrity” of Ukraine to be the basis for any peace agreement to end the war. But some key developing nations did not join in and Russia did not attend the conference.
Nebenzia pointed to Putin’s offer on June 14 to “immediately” order a cease-fire in Ukraine and start negotiations if Kyiv begins withdrawing troops from the four regions annexed by Moscow in 2022 and renounces plans to join NATO.
Zelenskyy, who has vowed not to give up any territory, rejected what he called an ultimatum by Putin to surrender more land.
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment about Nebenzia’s remarks.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian forces thwarted their drive to the capital. Much of the fighting has been focused in Ukraine’s south and east, where Moscow illegally seized four regions, although it doesn’t fully control any of them.
But Ukraine is still struggling to stabilize parts of its front line after desperately needed military assistance from the United States was delayed for months before being approved in April. And Russia took advantage of the Ukrainian weapons shortage to launch an offensive and has made gains.
Nebenzia called Zelenskyy’s peace formula “a nonstarter” and said he needs to be “realistic” and take into account what’s happened since April. The more difficult the situation becomes for Ukraine on the ground, he warned, the more difficult diplomacy will become to end the war."
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