Washington: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said there is an opportunity to develop a roadmap within the next few weeks to restart negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, following substantive contacts in Kyiv and Moscow.
Rubio offered a guarded assessment of the diplomatic effort after weekend talks and a telephone call between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I don’t want to be overly optimistic, but I also am not pessimistic in the sense that I think there’s an opportunity over the next few weeks to develop a roadmap moving forward to restart talks and maybe reach a conclusion there that’s acceptable to both sides,” Rubio told reporters in Barranquilla, Colombia.
He cautioned that any settlement would require the consent of both Moscow and Kyiv.
“Because that’s what it’s going to take in order for it to end; both sides (Russia and Ukraine) will have to agree to it,” he said.
Rubio described the conflict as difficult and said neither side had shown much willingness to make concessions over an extended period.
Both sides, he said, continued to maintain firm positions.
“There were substantive talks,” Rubio added.
“I don’t want to characterise them as good or bad or productive or unproductive, other than they were substantive. New ideas were bandied about.”
The discussions took place in both capitals over the weekend, Rubio said.
Washington hoped they could help create a path towards renewed negotiations, the US Secretary of State added.
“It’s a very difficult conflict, one that we’ve seen why – for now, an extended period of time you haven’t seen much movement on either side in terms of their willingness to make accommodations, and both sides have very bright red lines up to this point,” Rubio said.
“But these were substantive talks over the weekend, both in Kyiv and in Moscow, and hopefully from that we can create a path forward to restart talks that the United States has always been willing to play the role of a mediator,” he added.
Rubio said the weekend engagement was productive because it revived diplomatic contacts after months in which Washington saw little progress.
He also pointed to what he described as a degree of openness towards substantive proposals placed on the table.
“So the way I would characterise this weekend was it was productive in the sense that it restarted engagement after months of not really being engaged in this, and from our end anyways, because we just didn’t see it progressing,” Rubio said.
“There were substantive ideas put on the table that, for the first time, at least there seemed to be some general openness to. But a lot of work remains. I don’t want to over-characterise,” he added.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, triggering the largest armed conflict in Europe in decades and displacing millions of people.
Successive diplomatic initiatives have failed to produce a lasting settlement.
The central differences have included control of occupied territory, security guarantees for Ukraine and the terms under which fighting could end.
