The U.S. will cease its attempts to negotiate a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia in the following days if there is no signal that an agreement is reachable, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on April 18, APA reports citing Kyiv Independent.
Speaking after meeting European and Ukrainian officials in Paris, Rubio said that U.S. President Donald Trump is interested in reaching a deal but has other priorities as well.
Trump began his presidency by pledging to broker a ceasefire within 24 hours, eventually extending this deadline to 100 days.
"We're not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end. So we need to determine very quickly now, and I'm talking about a matter of days whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks," Rubio said.
"If it is we're in. If it's not, then we have other priorities to focus on as well."
The White House has grown increasingly frustrated, with Trump chastising both Ukraine and Russia for failing to reach a deal. The U.S. president has also repeatedly laid the blame for the war on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and former U.S. President Joe Biden, calling Russia's invasion "Biden's war."
Kyiv supported an unconditional ceasefire during talks with the U.S. in Jeddah on March 11 but also stressed that a comprehensive peace deal must include security guarantees—a commitment that Trump has been reluctant to make.
Moscow rejected the ceasefire proposal unless it included conditions undermining Ukraine's defense capabilities, including a full halt on military aid. The Kremlin also called for a ban on Ukraine joining NATO and full control over the partially occupied Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia as part of a peace deal.
Ukraine has said it would never recognize the Russian occupation of its sovereign territory.
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