The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said Sunday that the Trump administration will decide the week to continue pursuing a negotiated agreement in the invasion of Ukraine of Russia or to focus its attention on other matters.
This week will be “very important,” said Rubio in “Meet The Press” of the NBC. “We have to determine whether this is an effort in which we want to continue being congratulated or if it is time to focus on other issues that are equally, if no more important, in some cases.”
“But we because to see it happen,” he added. “There are reasons to be optimistic, but there are also reasons to be realistic or of course. We are close, but we are not close enough.”
Mr. Rubio did not give more details about the state of the conversations.
It was not clear if the timeline he sacrificed was Meean to press Ukraine and Russia to accept participating in direct discussions towards an agreement, or if President Trump and his AIDS were considering seriously moving away.
In an interview in “Face the Nation” by CBS News, Sergey V. Lavrov, Minister of Russia of Russia, did not suggest that any agreement was incoming. “We are ready to reach an agreement,” he said. “But there are still some specific points of this agreement that must be adjusted.”
Russia launched a flood and drones flood in kyiv last Thursday that killed at least 12 people, which caused unusually acute criticism of Mr. Trump. Mr. Lavrov said in the interview, that the strike day was recorded, that Russia had not yet accepted an US proposal for a high fire of 30 days that the Ukrainians have said they accepted.
Mr. Rubio’s comments arrived a day after Mr. Trump with President Volodymyr Zensky of Ukraine in the Vatican’s halls, while both leaders attended the funeral of Pope Francis. Attendees published photos of the two men sitting together in a conversation in the Basilica of San Pedro.
It was the first time that the two men had in person as an explosive meeting of the Oval office in February, when Trump and vice president JD Vance rebuked Mr. Zensky in front of journalists, saying that he had not shown enough gratitude.
Tensions exploded during winter and spring when Trump made statements favoring the perspective of President Vladimir V. Putin or Russia. Trump has also said chickens to form economic associations with Russia, while it also brings Ukraine in an agreement with its administration on critical minerals.
In meetings this month in Paris and London and in exchanges through allied channels, American and Ukrainian officials, including Mr. Rubio, have discussed the possible terms of a negotiated agreement that involves Russia and proposals and negotiated counterparts.
Several of the most controversial issues include the insistence of the Trump administration that the United States recognizes Crimea as Russian territory and gives de facto acceptance to the Russian occupation of the Earth in eastern Ukraine that Mr. Putin’s army has seized since 2014.
Mr. Trump also also declares that Ukraine cannot join the organization of the North Atlantic Treaty, at least its surveillance.
After Hey with Mr. Trump on Saturday, Zensky thanked the president of the United States in a publication on social networks and said that the meeting was a “very symbolic meeting that has the potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results.”
Steven Cheung, a White House spokesman, described the “very productive” discussion.
Another Saturday photo showed Mr. Trump and Mr. Zensky chatting with President Emmanuel Macron de France and Keir Starmer, Great Britain’s Prime Minister. French and British leaders have expressed the need for allied nations to provide security guarantees to Ukraine in case of a negotiated agreement, something that Mr. Zensky says that it is critical, but that the Trump administration insists on Europeans and not by Americans.
Zensky said in his publication on social networks that he had discussed security guarantees with Mr. Trump.
On Friday, Steve Witkoff, a real estate entrepreneur who is a special envoy for Mr. Trump, with Mr. Putin in Moscow for three hours. After learning about the results of that meeting, Trump wrote on social networks on Saturday: “One day in conversations and meetings with Russia and Ukraine. They are very close to an agreement, and the two parties now should meet, at very high levels, to” finish. “
Both Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Rubio had planned to attend a set of conversations with Ukrainian officials in London last week, but canceled after Mr. Zelensky’s assistants opposed the main elements in the settlement proposal that the two Americans presented to Ukrainian negotiators in Paris on April 17. Other US officials attended the conversations in London on Wednesday.
After Paris’s conversations, Rubio said the Trump administration would decide “in a matter of days whether this is feasible or not in the coming weeks.” He said at that time that the United States “would need to move on” if it did not seem possible to achieve a commitment to all parties to end the war in Ucrine.
