Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that Ukraine would have to make concessions over land that Russia had taken since 2014 as part of any agreement to end the war.
Mr. Rubio spoke as he was flying to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for talks with senior Ukrainian officials, and 10 days after a contentious White House meeting between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. The Trump administration halted military aid to Ukraine after the blowup, which centered on Mr. Trump’s refusal to include any security guarantees in a proposed deal involving Ukraine’s natural resources.
“The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things to end this conflict or at least pause it in some way, shape or form,” Mr. Rubio told reporters.
Mr. Rubio declined to offer the outline of a potential agreement but made clear that concessions by both sides would be central to diplomacy.
“I think both sides need to come to an understanding that there’s no military solution to this situation,” Mr. Rubio said. “The Russians can’t conquer all of Ukraine, and obviously it’ll be very difficult for Ukraine in any reasonable time period to sort of force the Russians back all the way to where they were in 2014.”
Mr. Rubio added that it would be imperative in future talks with Moscow to determine what Russia was willing to concede.
“We don’t know how far apart they truly are,” Mr. Rubio said.
The talks on Tuesday likely will not delve into the proposed agreement on Ukrainian natural resources that Mr. Trump had described as compensation for U.S. military support during the three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion. He has said that an American financial interest in Ukrainian fossil fuels and rare-earth minerals would provide Ukraine with implied security.
Although the United States has stopped sharing some intelligence with Ukraine, Mr. Rubio said it was still providing Kyiv with information that allowed it to continue defending itself against Russian attacks. He also said that there had never been a threat of removing Ukraine’s access to Starlink, the internet service company owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Even as the United States has been pressuring Ukraine in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has also threatened to impose additional sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s continued military activity. Mr. Rubio said that the United States was trying to demonstrate that it still had ways to coerce Russia in an effort to bring it to the negotiating table with Ukraine.
Mr. Rubio said he and Ukrainian officials would most likely discuss the resumption of military assistance during the meetings on Tuesday. He said the U.S. position on the issue could change if he believed that Ukraine was seriously committed to peace.
“I can assure you this, we will not be providing military aid to the Russians,” Mr. Rubio said.
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