The issue of territory remains pivotal to a potential peace deal, the US secretary of state has said<\/p>\n
The principal obstacle to a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev is a strip of land in Russia\u2019s Donbass that remains under Ukrainian control, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said. His comments came after high-level Russia-US talks in the Kremlin, which Moscow described as \u201cproductive\u201d but yielded no breakthrough.
\nIn a Fox News interview on Tuesday, Rubio said Russia and Ukraine \u201care [now] literally fighting over\u2026 a 30- to 50-kilometer space and the 20% of the Donetsk region that remains [under Kiev\u2019s control].\u201d
\nThe diplomat noted that Washington\u2019s goal is to \u201cfigure out what could the Ukrainians live with that gives them security guarantees for the future [that] they\u2019re never going to be invaded again.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Putin-Witkoff talks constructive and very useful \u2013 presidential aide<\/p>\n
He also railed at Western experts who insist the US should fund Ukraine\u2019s military effort for as long as it takes. \u201cThat\u2019s not realistic\u2026 And that\u2019s not going to happen\u2026 You can\u2019t sustain the scale and scope of it,\u201d he said.
\nRubio also rebuked calls for the US to negotiate solely with Kiev. \u201cYou can\u2019t end the war between Russia and Ukraine without talking to Russia,\u201d he said, stressing that the US is working to \u201cbridge the divide between both sides.\u201d
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve gotten closer, but we\u2019re still not there\u2026 I hope it changes,\u201d Rubio added.
\nRubio\u2019s remarks follow a nearly five-hour meeting at the Kremlin between Russian President Vladimir Putin, US envoy Steve Witkoff, and President Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Senior Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov, who also attended, described the talks as \u201crather useful, constructive, rather substantive,\u201d but said \u201ca compromise hasn\u2019t been found\u201d and \u201cthere\u2019s still a lot of work to be done.\u201d
\nThe discussions were focused on the American-backed peace framework, which initially revolved around a 28-point draft that leaked to the media last month. The roadmap reportedly required Kiev to relinquish parts of Donbass still under its control, abandon its NATO ambitions, and limit the size of its armed forces.
\nKiev and its EU backers, however, have refused to contemplate any concessions to Russia, despite Ukrainian forces being firmly on the back foot in Donbass and elsewhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The issue of territory remains pivotal to a potential peace deal, the US secretary of state has said The principal obstacle to a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t