Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke on the phone with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, on Saturday to get an update on the latest talks, as the US seeks to determine whether Russia is “tapping us along” in efforts to end the conflict in Ukraine.
“We talked about a variety of things,” Rubio told “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” in an interview that aired Sunday. “I wanted to get his feedback on how the talks went yesterday. They were not an absolute waste of time.”
The phone call between the countries’ top diplomats came one day after Moscow and Kyiv held their first direct talks in three years. Russian President Vladimir Putin turned down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s offer to meet face-to-face in Turkey after he proposed direct negotiations, instead sending a lower-level delegation.
The talks in Istanbul on Friday ended after less than two hours without a cease-fire, though both sides agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each.
The US, along with its European allies, has been pushing Russia and Ukraine to end the three-year war. President Trump, who has expressed frustration with the stalled talks and threatened to tighten American sanctions unless progress is made toward a peace deal, said Saturday that he will speak with Putin by phone on Monday. Mr. Trump said that call would be followed by one with Zelenskyy.
“Are they nudging us along? “Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out,” Rubio told Brennan when asked if Russia and Ukraine want to talk to “buy time.” “We’ll find out pretty soon.”
He went on to say, “On the one hand, we’re trying to achieve peace and put an end to a bloody, costly, and destructive war. So, some patience is required. On the other hand, we have no time to waste. There are many other things going on in the world that we should be aware of.
The secretary of state believes that only a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin will move these talks forward. He stated that Mr. Trump has publicly offered to meet one-on-one.
“The mechanics of setting that kind of meeting up would require a little bit of work, so I can’t say that’s being planned as we speak in terms of picking a site and a date,” Rubio told reporters. “However, the president wants to do it. “He wants to do it as soon as possible.”
The Vatican has extended a “very generous offer” to host any peace talks. Rubio, who is in Rome to attend Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration Mass on Sunday, stated that the Vatican is a place where “all parties would feel comfortable.”
Leo, who was elected as the first pope born in the United States on May 8, echoed Pope Francis’ call for peace in Ukraine in his first Sunday noon blessing. He urged all sides to do everything possible to achieve “an authentic, just, and lasting peace.”