U.S. 'will move on' from Ukraine peace efforts if no progress within days, Marco Rubio warns
The U.S. may be ready to “move on” from its efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
The United States may be ready to “move on” from its efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine if there is no clear progress in the coming days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday.
After a grueling day of talks among U.S., Ukrainian and European officials in Paris on Friday, Rubio told reporters, “We’re not going to continue with this endeavor for weeks and months on end.”
“We need to figure out here now, within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term, because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on,” he said, adding that President Donald Trump “feels very strongly about that.”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Trump said that "Marco is right" that the U.S. wants the war to end, but "hopefully we won't have to" walk away from peace talks. Pressed on a specific timeline for when the U.S. would begin to reevaluate its role in the negotiations, Trump said, “No specific numbers of days, but quickly, we want to get it done.”
“We’re talking about, here, people dying,” Trump said. “We’re going to get it stopped, ideally. Now if, for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult. We’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’ and we’re going to just take a pass. But hopefully we won’t have to do that, and Marco, and Marco is right in saying it."
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