Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is far from happening.
“Look, we’ve gotten closer. We, for the first time — we haven’t known this for three years — we kind of can see what it would take for Ukraine to stop. We can see what it would take for the Russians to stop,” Mr. Rubio told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Thursday night. “The problem is those two positions are still a little far apart.”
Still, the U.S. is “not going to give up on it,” Mr. Rubio said.
“But there does come a point where the president has to decide how much more time at the highest levels of our government do you dedicate it, when maybe one of the two sides or both aren’t really close enough when we’ve got so many — I would argue even more important — issues going on around the world,” he said.
He said it would take “a real breakthrough” to make a deal possible, but it’s ultimately President Trump’s decision when the U.S. moves on.
Mr. Rubio was just announced as the interim national security adviser as well as secretary of state after the president shifted Mike Waltz to be his nominee for U.N. ambassador.
Mr. Rubio said the one win was signing the mineral deal with Ukraine.
“It’s good for America because we’ve invested a lot of money in this war,” the secretary said. “It’s also good for Ukraine because it’s going to help them be able to develop their economy and rebuild when this war ends.”
The deal was supposed to be signed in February, but a contentious Oval Office meeting between Mr. Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy led to the deal’s postponement.
The pact was finally signed Wednesday, giving the U.S. access to new projects that involve resources like aluminum, graphite, oil and natural gas.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has become increasingly frustrated with the lack of a peace deal. Officials from the U.S. and other countries have met with Mr. Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin multiple times to end the war.
