RUBIO: "NO PROCESS" ON UKRAINE PEACE
Secretary of State More Cautious on Ending Three-Year War in Face the Nation Appearance
On an appearance Sunday on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio sounded far less hopeful than his boss, President Donald Trump, about the prospects for peace in Russia’s nearly three-year long war on Ukraine. When asked by host Margaret Brennan, the Secretary of State appeared to ease himself out of the loop. “Well, here’s what I know. I know President Trump spoke to Vladimir Putin last week, and in it, Vladimir Putin expressed his interest in peace, and the President expressed his desire to see an end to this conflict,” Rubio said.
Rubio seemed to treat the negotiations as more of a possibility than a reality. “I mean, I imagine there will be follow-up conversations to figure out what a process to talk about that would look like, and then at that point perhaps we can begin to share more details,” he told Brennan. Instead, he put Trump front and center, saying that if the President “sees an opportunity to end it, which is what he’s looking for, whether there is an opportunity or not, we are going to pursue it. Ultimately, it will reach a point when you are – if it’s real negotiations – and we’re not there yet,” Rubio told Brennan. The Secretary of State appeared to place peace prospects in the Ukraine war squarely on Trump’s shoulders, saying “we stand ready to follow the President’s lead on this and begin to explore ways, if those opportunities present themselves, to begin a process towards peace.”
When asked about the peace process being led by Special Envoy Keith Kellogg, Rubio told Brennan: “Well, first of all, I think what we have to understand is right now there is no process.” The Secretary of State bluntly acknowledged that Ukraine would ultimately have to be a party to any negotiations, saying that “Ukraine will have to be involved because they’re the one that was invaded.”