New York: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio does not see an immediate end to the Ukraine war, although progress was made during the summit between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
“We’re not at the precipice of a peace agreement, we’re not at the edge of one, but I do think progress was made,” he told an ABC news programme on Sunday.
“We made progress in the sense that we identified potential areas of agreement, but there remains some big areas of disagreement. So, we’re still a long ways off,” he added.
But on a CBS programme, Rubio said, “We have to make enough progress so that we can sit down Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Putin in the same place.”
That “is what President Zelensky has been asking for, and (will be required to) reach a final agreement that ends this war,” he added.
Zelensky and European leaders, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz, are to meet with Trump on Monday.
Rubio indicated that Ukraine would be required to make some concessions, likely on territories.
Rubio said, “If one side gets everything they want, that’s called surrender. And that’s not what we’re close to doing, because neither side here is on the verge of surrender, or anything close to it.”
Rubio and Trump’s Special Envoy Witkoff were the only ones from the US side with Trump at Friday’s summit in Alaska.
While Rubio refused to provide any details of the talks, Witkoff said Trump got assurances from Putin that he would allow security guarantees for Ukraine and enact a legislative promise not to invade Ukraine or other countries.
“We agreed to robust security guarantees that I would describe as game changing,” Witkoff, Trump’s envoy who made the preliminary arrangements for the summit in Alaska, told CNN on Sunday.
He said that Putin also agreed to a enact a “legislative enshrinement” promising not to invade Ukraine or other countries.
Trump said as he headed to the summit that he would not be unhappy if there wasn’t a ceasefire and there would be “severe consequences”.
But after the Putin meeting, he said on Truth Social that he was now for a total peace package and “not a mere ceasefire agreement”.
Defending the change, Witkoff said that because of “so much progress” on the other issues for a peace deal, “Trump, pivoted to that”.
Rubio defended on ABC about Trump’s decision not to impose new sanctions on Moscow for not agreeing to a ceasefire.
He said that it was important to keep the negotiations with Russia going and fresh sanctions would impede them.
(IANS)
