President Donald Trump will buck Europe’s pleas to ratchet up sanctions on Russia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday, saying the U.S. still wants room to negotiate a peace deal.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders are hoping to convince Trump later on Wednesday to add more sanctions on Moscow, particularly after Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly rebuffed American attempts to broker a ceasefire with Ukraine.
“If we did what everybody here wants us to do, and that is come in and crush them with more sanctions, we probably lose our ability to talk to them about the ceasefire and then who’s talking to them?,” Rubio said in an exclusive interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns on the sidelines of the NATO summit.
Trump will “know the right time and place” for new economic measures and the administration is working with Congress to make sure they allow Trump the appropriate flexibility, Rubio said. But once that happens, he added, it means the window for talking with Russia is likely closed.
“If he does it, you’re almost admitting that this is not going to be negotiated anytime soon,” Rubio said.
“We’re going to continue to engage,” he said. “In the sense that if there’s an opportunity for us to make a difference and get them to the table, we’re going to take it.”
As talks with Russia have stalled, Rubio said Moscow believes it can achieve its territorial goals on the battlefield – an assessment Washington disagrees with.
“Our sense of it is that the Russians are going to try to achieve in the battlefield what they’ve demanded in the negotiating table, which is certain territories [maintain] their administrative lines and the like,” he said. “We think it’s going to be a lot harder for them to achieve that than they think it’s going to be.”
