By Anjali Sharma
WASHINGTON – US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been a global player for many years, so the US cannot but communicate with him to settle the conflict in Ukraine.
“Putin is already on the world stage,” he said on Sunday in an interview with ABC News.
“He has the world’s largest tactical nuclear arsenal in the world and the second largest strategic nuclear arsenal in the world. He’s already on the world stage.”
“When I hear people say that, ‘oh, it elevates him.’ Well, all we do is talk about Putin all the time. All the media has done is talk about Putin all the time for the last four or five years,” he noted, quoted by Russian news agency TASS.
“It means you’re not going to have a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, you’re not going to end a war between Russia and Ukraine without dealing with Putin. That’s just common sense. I shouldn’t even have to say it. So, people can say whatever they want,” he added.
The Russian side was represented by Presidential aide Yury Ushakov and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while the American side was represented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.
In a statement to the press after the talks, Putin said that the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict was the main topic of the summit.
He also called for turning the page in bilateral relations and returning to cooperation, and invited Trump to Moscow.
Trump announced the progress made in the talks, but noted that the parties had not managed to reach agreement.
Rubio said on Sunday that both Putin and Zelensky must make concessions to achieve a peace deal.
“You can’t have a peace agreement unless both sides give and get. You can’t have a peace agreement unless both sides make concessions,” Rubio told ABC News.
“If not, it’s just called surrender, and neither side is going to surrender, so both sides are going to have to make concessions.”
Rubio said the US did ask Putin to make them; when it comes to sanctions, the Trump administration believes that as soon as it levies additional sanctions to those already in place, the negotiations will halt.
