Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US doesn’t want to force a ceasefire deal on Ukraine and said the Trump administration still doesn’t know whether President Vladimir Putin wants to do a deal or take over the entire country.
Rubio said he might attend talks set for this weekend in Miami, where envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to meet with Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev. He said the goal of the talks is to figure out whether the two countries’ demands can overlap.
“This whole narrative that we’re trying to force something on Ukraine is silly,” Rubio said. “We are just trying to find whether there’s common ground that we can make happen, and maybe that’s not possible.”
Speaking to reporters at a year-end briefing, Rubio said he wasn’t prepared to put a time-line on the talks. But his words may offer a measure of reassurance to Ukraine and its European allies, which have worried that President Donald Trump would try to force President Volodymyr Zelenskiy into a deal he doesn’t want to make.
The talks are the latest in a bid to pin down a deal based on a 28-point peace plan that emerged last month following discussions between Witkoff and Dmitriev. That plan initially endorsed territorial concessions and other moves that Kyiv had already flatly rejected. Some of the most contentious issues have been dropped or changed.
Earlier Friday, Putin held his own yearly press conference to say he’s willing to discuss bringing the war to an end but ruled out changes sought by Kyiv and Europe to the US plan. He faulted Russia’s “western opponents” for a failure to reach a deal.
Rubio declined to characterize Putin’s remarks.
“I don’t know if Putin wants to do a deal or Putin wants to take the whole country,” he said. “There’s what people say, and what people do.”
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