US will ‘move on’ from Ukraine peace talks if no progress soon » Capital News
The US will abandon trying to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal within days unless there are clear signs a truce can be reached, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned.
“We’re not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end,” Rubio said, adding that the US had “other priorities to focus on”.
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and has placed a number of conditions on any potential ceasefire.
Rubio’s comments come just hours after Ukraine took the first step towards signing a minerals deal with Washington that intends to set up an investment fund for Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Following a meeting with European leaders in Paris about a potential ceasefire on Thursday, Rubio told reporters on Friday: “We need to determine very quickly now – and I’m talking about a matter of days – whether or not this is doable” in the short-term.
“If it’s not going to happen, then we’re just going to move on,” he said about truce talks.
He said it was clear that a peace deal would be difficult to strike but there needed to be signs it could be done soon. Trump had said before he re-entered office that he would stop the fighting in the first 24 hours of his presidency.
Rubio’s comments come as Russian strikes on Ukraine continue. On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on X that Russia had launched a volley of missile attacks that killed two people.
The US warning about peace talks follows separate news that Ukraine and the US signed a memorandum of intent on Thursday stating that the countries intend to establish an investment fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine as part of an economic partnership agreement.
The aim is to finalise the deal by 26 April, the memo published by the Ukrainian government says.
The document provides no details on natural resources, but previous leaks have suggested the deal has been extended beyond minerals to control of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, as well as its oil and gas.
Ukrainian negotiators have tried to resist Trump’s demands that a joint investment fund would pay back the US for previous military aid, but have seemingly accepted his claim that it would help the country recover after the war ends.
The US has so far resisted providing Kyiv with security guarantees to support any future ceasefire.
The memo said the “American people desire to invest alongside the Ukrainian people in a free, sovereign and secure Ukraine”.
Zelensky had been hoping to use the deal to secure a US security guarantee in the event of a ceasefire deal, telling European leaders last month that “a ceasefire without security guarantees is dangerous for Ukraine”.
The White House argues the mere presence of US businesses would put off Russia from further aggression, but that did not exactly work when they invaded in 2022.
Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko announced the signing of the memorandum on X, with pictures of Svyrydenko and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately signing the document over an online call.
“There is a lot to do, but the current pace and significant progress give reason to expect that the document will be very beneficial for both countries,” Svyrydenko wrote.
Bessent said the details were still being worked out but the deal is “substantially what we’d agreed on previously.” The memo said technical discussions were held in Washington DC as recently as 11 and 12 April.
Trump hinted at the deal during a press conference with Italian leader Giorgia Meloni, saying “we have a minerals deal which I guess is going to be signed on (next) Thursday…And I assume they’re going to live up to the deal. So we’ll see. But we have a deal on that.”
Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, an MP and the chair of Ukraine’s parliamentary committee on EU Integration, told the BBC the Ukrainian Parliament will have “the last word” in the deal.
She added: “I hope that there will be enough reasoning to ensure that whatever is signed, and if it is going to be ratified that it is in the interest of our country and our people.”
A minerals deal had been temporarily blown off course after Trump’s public shouting match with Zelensky at the White House in February.
Since then, US and Ukrainian negotiators have met to discuss how to end the war, with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha gathering with Rubio and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in Paris on Thursday.
Sybiha said they had “discussed the paths to a fair and lasting peace, including full ceasefire, multinational contingent, and security guarantees for Ukraine”.