US Secretary of State highlights key issue in talks on ending war in Ukraine
Photo: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (Getty Images)
The topic of future negotiations between Russia and the United States should be what Moscow is willing to do to end the war in Ukraine. At the same time, the same question should be posed to official Kyiv, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says in an interview with Breitbart News.
Rubio noted that at the General Assembly session, the United States voted against a UN resolution condemning Russia for the war in Ukraine because it was "antagonistic" and contradicted efforts aimed at bringing both sides to the negotiating table to end the war.
"On the broader resolution, we think the UN needs to get - if it’s going to be useful in the 21st century - the UN needs to get back to its charter mission, which is the prevention and ending of war and conflict," Rubio said.
In this context, the US Secretary of State emphasized that President Donald Trump "has made very clear that he wants to end this war" because "far too many people have died and he wants to bring it to an end."
At the same time, Rubio called anything "antagonistic in the UN toward either side" unfavorable.
"We’re trying to get these guys to the table. Unfortunately, Ukraine didn’t agree and they wanted to move forward on theirs. We then went to the Security Council with our compromise, which I think is very fair language and it basically says ‘war is a terrible thing.’ So I thought it was good we got it done at the Security Council and the Russians didn’t veto it," Rubio said.
The US Secretary of State once again called Trump a "president of peace" and did not rule out that the war in Ukraine can end in a matter of “weeks.”
For this to happen, according to Rubio, "we’ve got to get them both to the table, starting with the Russians." According to him, a US delegation met with Russian representatives last week, and the main question of this meeting was: "Are you interested in ending this conflict or not?"
"A lot of people don’t know the answer to that. If you talk to some in Europe, they’ll tell you that Putin is not interested in ending the war. They said they would be, under the right conditions. We didn’t discuss what those conditions were. So the next step is to meet with them again at some point, with the right group of people in the room, and begin to outline what would it take for Russia to stop a war. And obviously, we’ve got to ask Ukraine the same question because you can’t stop a war unless both sides agree to it," said the US Secretary of State.
UN resolutions on war in Ukraine
On Monday, February 24, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling on the Kremlin to withdraw its troops from Ukraine. The document recognized Russia as the aggressor. More than 90 countries worldwide supported the resolution, while the US, Hungary, Russia, and Israel voted against it.
At the same time, the US introduced its own version of the resolution to the UN, in which the war was initially referred to as a "conflict." At the last moment, the term was replaced with "Russia’s invasion of Ukraine."
On Monday, the UN Security Council approved the US resolution. The document calls for "ending the conflict" and "establishing a lasting peace" between Ukraine and Russia.
