Marco Rubio: US is funding stalemate in Ukraine, promises 'tough diplomacy'

For the past year and a half, the United States has been financing a deadlock in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, while Ukraine's future remains under threat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with journalist Megyn Kelly, published on YouTube.

Rubio stated that Washington misled people into believing that Ukraine could not only defeat Russia but also return to the conditions of 2012 or 2014, before the loss of Crimea.

"As a result, what they have been asking for over the last year and a half is to fund a stalemate, a protracted stalemate, while the human suffering continued. Meanwhile, Ukraine has been set back a hundred years, and its energy grid had been wiped out. Someone will have to pay for all this reconstruction," Rubio said.

He reminded that many Ukrainians have fled the country and may never return, which puts Ukraine's future at risk. He again emphasized the need for concessions from both sides in potential negotiations but declined to reveal specifics, stating:

"This will be the kind of tough diplomacy we've been accustomed to in the past."

Trump Pushes for Diplomatic Resolution

Rubio added that Russia is also paying a high price through economic strain and inflation due to the prolonged conflict.

According to Rubio, President Donald Trump sees diplomatic negotiations as the only way to resolve the war in Ukraine:

"The president's position is that this is a protracted conflict, and it needs to end. It must be resolved through negotiations. In any negotiations, both sides have to give something up. (…) We have difficult diplomatic work ahead of us, something we have done before."

The Republican senator has previously called resolving the Ukraine conflict a priority for the US. In January, he said that the US is offering Russia two ways to end the war: an easy way and a hard way.

1. The easy way: Moscow accepts Washington's terms.
2. The hard way: If no deal is reached, Trump has vowed to impose high taxes, tariffs, and sanctions on everything Russia sells to the US and other participating countries.

In response, the Kremlin dismissed Trump's sanctions threats as nothing new, stating that "he likes those methods", while Russia remains open to "equal and mutually respectful dialogue."

Moscow has repeatedly expressed its willingness to negotiate with Ukraine.