“Russia has made a demand of Ukraine that the Ukrainians cannot agree to,” declared U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He admitted that he has not spoken with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, for a month.
When asked whether, in his view, Russia does not want peace, Rubio replied:
“Well, we can only go by what we see. They’ve made it clear they want the rest of the Donetsk region, and obviously the Ukrainians won’t agree to that. So now we’re seeing that the Russians continue their long-range strikes on Ukraine, obviously to weaken its energy network and try to demoralize the country (…), they’ve made some advances in the Donetsk region. They’re losing 7,000 soldiers a week (…), so that’s our assessment for now. They’ve made a demand that Ukraine cannot agree to,” said Rubio.
Rubio also informed that the Americans are in talks with the Ukrainians about the kind of support they need in response to the attacks on their energy infrastructure.
“And of course, helping them get through the winter is important from a humanitarian point of view. The challenge is that Ukraine’s power grid is being weakened every year (…),” Rubio emphasized in a conversation with reporters in Canada, where he attended a meeting with his G7 counterparts. “I know there are ongoing technical discussions about the specific weapons they need. But in the end, if that equipment gets destroyed a week after it’s installed, that’s going to be a problem. And that’s been the case for two or three years now,” he added.
Asked about sanctions against Russia, Rubio responded:
“There’s not much left on our side in terms of sanctions. We’ve hit their main oil companies, which everyone was asking for. Of course, sanctions have to be implemented, and it’ll take some time before they’re felt. But I don’t know what else can be done. We’re running out of things to sanction,” said the Secretary of State.
Marco Rubio revealed that he hasn’t spoken to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “for a month,” but assured that their relations are “fine.”
Referring to his last conversation with Lavrov, he noted, “We’d like this war to end, but we can’t just keep having meetings for the sake of meetings.” According to media reports, following his conversation with the Russian foreign minister, Rubio advised Donald Trump against meeting with Vladimir Putin in Budapest. Sources cited by The Wall Street Journal said that the U.S. Secretary of State believes a Trump-Putin meeting in the near future would not bring peace any closer in Ukraine.
Rubio was also asked about incidents of Russian violations of the borders of Eastern European countries.
“We don’t support them. We don’t like them. But we’re firmly committed to NATO and our partners, if they’re ever attacked. We think (…) these provocations are coming from Russia. We think they’re counterproductive and, of course, they create a high level of tension that could lead to something bigger, which would be bad news for them and for everyone,” Rubio replied.