US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that President Donald Trump will walk away from the attempt to mediate the Russian-Ukraine peace agreement within days unless there are clear signs that a deal can be made.
“We will not continue in this endeavor for weeks and consecutive months. So we need to determine very quickly now, and I am talking about the days of whether this is possible in the next few weeks,” Rubio said in Paris after meeting with European and Ukrainian leaders.
“The president feels very strongly. He has allocated a lot of time and energy for this … This is important, but there are many other important things that are worthy of the same, if not more attention.”
Rubio's warning came amid signs of some progress in the US talks with Ukraine.
Trump said on Thursday that he expected to sign a deal with Kiev next week that would allow the United States to access Ukraine minerals.
An attempt to sign a metal agreement collapsed in February after the clash of Ukrainian President Folodimir Zelinski with Trump and Vice President JD Vance at the Oval Office.
After talks in Paris on Thursday-the first high-level and personal conversations on pushing Trump's peace, which included European powers-Rubio said that an American peace framework received a “encouraging reception”.
The Zelinski office described constructive and positive conversations.
On Friday, Rubio's comments confirm the increasing frustration in the White House due to the lack of progress in payments to settle a growing list of geopolitical challenges.
Rubio said that he spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after Paris spoke and told him that they were constructive, and also briefed him on the “elements” of the American peace framework.
Rubio said the issue of US security guarantees as part of any deal that appeared in talks in Paris, without going into more details.
He said that the security guarantees were a problem “we can reform in an acceptable way for all,” but “we have greater challenges that we need to discover, whether possible in the short term.”
He said it was clear that the peace agreement would be difficult to strike, but there should be signs that could be done soon.
He said: “No one says that this can be done within 12 hours. But we want to see to what extent is it away and whether these differences can be narrowed, if it is possible to obtain a movement during the time period that we put into consideration.”
The French presidency or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately did not return requests to comment.
