US Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed that American officials held conversations with high-level Russian representatives earlier this week regarding Ukraine war settlement, but Washington saw no advancement toward peace negotiations, according to his interview with Fox News published by the State Department press service.
"We continue to engage with the Russian side, as early as this week – earlier this week, on Monday or Tuesday. We had a whole conversation with them as well – not with Putin but with some of Putin’s top people – in hopes of arriving at some understanding on a path forward that would lead to peace, and we’ve not seen any progress on that," Rubio said.
The Secretary of State said that President Donald Trump has waited over six months and made extensive efforts to establish peace. Rubio said Trump becomes most frustrated with phone calls where Russians claim they want the conflict to end, only for cities to be bombed shortly after.
"What bothers the President the most is he has these great phone calls where everyone sort of claims yeah, we'd like to see this end, if we could find a way forward, and then he turns on the news and another city has been bombed, including those far from the frontlines," Rubio said.
Rubio added that potential sanctions options available to the President, including secondary sanctions on Russian oil sales and sectoral banking sanctions.
The Secretary claimed that the US remains willing to participate in peace negotiations if the opportunity arises, but warned that Trump "is not going to wait forever."
Trump recently shortened his ultimatum to Putin from 50 days to 10-12 days for reaching a peace agreement, threatening secondary tariffs on Russian resource buyers otherwise. The following day, the President declared Putin has 10 days to end the war against Ukraine, though Trump believes settling the war will take considerable time.
