The American State Secretary Marco Rubio raised the pressure on Ukraine and Russia to negotiate a peace agreement on Sunday.
“This week will be a really important week in which we have to determine whether this is an attempt we want to be involved in, or whether it is time to concentrate a bit on other issues that are just as more important,” said Rubio on American television, referring to the role of Washington as a mediator.
But he refused to give a concrete answer to the specific question of how long Kiev and Moscow still had to reach an agreement and said that it would be “stupid” to determine a specific date.
From a possible agreement, Rubio said that the goal had not yet been reached. “There are reasons to be optimistic, but there are of course reasons to be realistic too. We are close by, but we are not close enough.”
“We have made real progress, but those last few steps of this trip would always be the most difficult,” he said.
The US could not continue to spend time and resources on these efforts if they did not lead to success, Rubio said.
US President Donald Trump met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zensky on the sidelines of the Pope Francis funeral service in Rome. During his return trip to the US, he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would not want to end seriously – and endangered Moscow with new sanctions.
Washington puts Ukraine pressure on accepting an agreement to terminate the war that would include steep concessions, financially and territorial. In the meantime, Moscow continues to bomb his neighbor despite the declared calls for peace, in the full invasion of Russia in 2022.
