Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday said the U.S. is still holding out hope for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, despite President Donald Trump failing to secure one during Friday’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a series of interviews on Sunday, Rubio said progress was made at the Alaska meeting between Trump and Putin, but a ceasefire has yet to be agreed upon.
“We made progress in the sense that we identified potential areas of agreement, but there remain some big areas of disagreement,” Rubio said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“We’re not at the precipice of an agreement, we’re not at the edge of one,” he added.
Rubio’s comments appear at odds with special envoy Steve Witkoff’s, who said on Sunday that the U.S. secured critical wins from the summit.
Rubio refused to detail what was discussed at the high-stakes meeting between the two leaders, instead telling CBS’s Margaret Brennan that the U.S. is not in a position to make any agreements or rejections on behalf of either of the warring nations.
And despite Trump’s threats of “very severe consequences” for Russia if a ceasefire is not reached, Rubio said additional sanctions will not help the situation.
“The moment the president puts the additional sanctions, that’s the end of the talks,” he said on “Face the Nation.” “You’ve basically locked in at least another year to year and a half of war and death and destruction. We may unfortunately wind up there, but we don’t want to wind up there.”
Still, he said, there were “some concepts and ideas discussed that the Ukrainians could be supportive of.”
“Ultimately, there are things that were discussed as part of this meeting that are potentials for breakthroughs, potentials for progress,” he said.
Those ideas, he added, will be discussed in Monday’s meeting with European allies, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Rubio laid responsibility on both Russia and Ukraine for refusing to make enough concessions for a ceasefire.
“Both sides are going to have to give up something in order to get to the table, in order to make this happen. That’s — that’s just the way it is,” Rubio said.
But Rubio sidestepped questions of the U.S. demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian land.
“Territories will have to be discussed. It’s just a fact, and there are things that maybe Russia is holding now that they’re going to have to give up. Who knows? The point is, we need to create a scenario where that becomes possible, and that’s why this has been so hard, because neither side, up to now, has been willing to give on some of these things,” he said.
