US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that if it was not possible to end the war in Ukraine, the United States must abandon his efforts and move on.
“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we have to move on,” he told journalists before leaving Paris. “We have to determine very quickly now, and I'm talking about a few days, whether or not it is.”
The comments come one day after him and the special envoy Steve Witkoff met European and Ukrainian allies While the administration of US President Donald Trump pushed at the end of the Russian war in Ukraine.
An overview of the United States of a peace plan had received an “encouraging reception” during talks, according to a reading of the State Department, which did not give any details on the plan. Rubio also spoke with the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, and transmitted the same overview, said reading.
Speaking on Friday, Rubio said that he and Witkoff had come to Paris to “start talking about more specific contours of what he could take to put an end to war” and if it is a war that can be over.
“If it is not possible, if we are so distant that it will not happen, I think that the president is probably at a point where he will say that we have finished,” he said.
“It is not our war. We have not started it. The United States has helped Ukraine for three years and we want it to end, but it is not our war,” he added.
“The President (Trump) spent 87 days at the highest level of this government to take on this war on several occasions to put this war and finish. We now reach a point where we must decide and determine whether this is even possible or not. This is why we engage both parties.”
Meanwhile, Russia launched a missile attack against Ukraine overnight, hitting a residential area in the city of Kharkiv. The strike killed a person and injured 67 others, the authorities announced on Friday, adding that they feared that more people could be trapped under the rubble of a damaged building.
Go to the mineral agreement
Rubio's warning words came after the United States and Ukraine got closer to win an agreement on a mineral agreement on Thursday evening.
kyiv and Washington have now signed a memorandum as a movement towards the proposed agreement, said the Ukrainian Minister of the Economy, Yulia Svyrydenko.
“We are pleased to announce the signature, with our American partners, of a protocol of intention, which opens the way to an economic partnership agreement and the creation of the investment fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine,” said SvyryDeno in an article on X.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had declared earlier Thursday that a memorandum linked to the agreement could be signed at a distance that day.
“This document is the result of the professional work of the negotiation teams, which recently completed another series of technical discussions in Washington,” continued Svyrydenko. “To come, the finalization of the text of the agreement and its signature – then of ratification by parliaments.”
“There is a lot to do, but the current pace and significant progress give reasons to expect the document to be very beneficial for the two countries,” concluded Svyrydenko.
Anterior iteration of The mineral agreement is not signed Following a public argument between Zelensky and Trump in February.
The details of the proposed agreement have since been in flow, the Treasury officials who met a Ukrainian delegation in Washington this week to win, sources told CNN.
This is a story in development and will be updated.
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