In a combative series of interviews on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “both sides are going to have to make concessions” for there to be a peaceful resolution to the war that erupted when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022,
The Guardian reports.
“You can’t have a peace agreement unless both sides make concessions – that’s a fact,” the Trump administration’s top diplomat said Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “That’s true in virtually any negotiation. If not, it’s just called surrender. And neither side is going to surrender. So both sides are going to have to make concessions.”
Rubio said the recent talks in Alaska between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his US counterpart Donald Trump toward ending the war had “made progress in the sense that we identified potential areas of agreement – but there remains some big areas of disagreement”.
“We’re still a long ways off,” Rubio added. “We’re not at the precipice of a peace agreement. We’re not at the edge of one. But I do think progress was made and towards one.”
He declined to go into specific areas of agreement or disagreement, or outline what Trump has described as “severe consequences” for Russia if its aggression toward Ukraine continued.
“Ultimately, if there isn’t a peace agreement, if there isn’t an end of this war, the president’s been clear – there are going to be consequences,” Rubio remarked. “But we’re trying to avoid that. And the way we’re trying to avoid those consequences is with an even better consequence, which is peace, the end of hostilities.”
