U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that the United States is working toward a "fair" and "sustainable" solution to end Russia’s three-year war on Ukraine, but that both Moscow and Kyiv would have to make concessions to achieve peace.
Rubio offered his assessment after he and other key U.S. officials met for several hours in Saudi Arabia with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his aides in a first effort toward ending the war and improving the contentious Washington-Moscow relationship.
“The goal is to bring an end to this conflict in a way that's fair, enduring, sustainable and acceptable to all parties involved," Rubio told reporters, although no Ukrainian or European officials were at the table for the talks.
Rubio said he was "convinced" that Moscow was willing to engage in a "serious process" to end the war, which Russia started with a full-scale invasion of its neighbor three years ago next week.
Tens of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, along with Ukrainian civilians, have been killed in the fighting, Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.
The U.S. and Russia agreed to "appoint respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible," State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said in a statement. Bruce characterized the meeting as "an important step forward" toward peace.
Rubio said Ukraine and European nations would have to be involved in talks on ending the war. He said that if the war is halted, the U.S. would have "extraordinary opportunities … to partner" with Russia on trade and other global issues.
"The key to unlock that is the end to this conflict," he said.
National security adviser Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff joined Rubio for the talks.
Waltz told reporters that negotiations to end the fighting will focus on territory and security guarantees for both Ukraine and Russia.
"This needs to be a permanent end to the war and not a temporary end, as we've seen in the past," Waltz said.
Russia now controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized 2014 territory. Moscow controls the Crimean Peninsula that it unilaterally annexed in 2014, along with a large portion of eastern Ukraine pro-Russian separatists captured in subsequent fighting and lands the Russian military have taken over since the 2022 invasion.
As the invasion started, Moscow hoped for a quick takeover of all of Ukraine. But with stiff Ukrainian resistance, the war instead evolved into a grinding ground conflict and daily aerial bombardments by each side.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has long demanded that his country’s 2014 boundaries be restored, but U.S. officials have said that is unrealistic, as was Kyiv’s long-sought goal of joining NATO, the West’s main military alliance, as part of a negotiated peace settlement.
Zelenskyy has said it will not agree to a U.S.-Russian dictated settlement of the war.
He postponed a trip to Saudi Arabia that had been scheduled for this week, citing the fact that officials from his country were not invited to Tuesday’s U.S.-Russia talks. The Ukrainian leader suggested that he wanted to avoid his visit being linked to the talks and rescheduled the trip for March 10.
Zelenskyy is due to host the U.S. envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, for talks on Wednesday.
Bruce said the Rubio-Lavrov talks, the first extensive discussions between the two countries in more than three years, also laid the groundwork for more talks aside from the negotiations to end the war.
She said the two sides would “establish a consultation mechanism to address irritants to our bilateral relationship with the objective of taking steps necessary to normalize the operation of our respective diplomatic missions.”
Bruce said the U.S. and Russia would “lay the groundwork for future cooperation on matters of mutual geopolitical interest and historic economic and investment opportunities” once the war is ended.
The U.S.-Russia engagement sparked concern among European leaders who in recent days have highlighted the need for Ukraine to be involved in discussions about its future, and for European nations to play a role in what they also see as a key development for their own security.
French President Emmanuel Macron convened a group of European leaders for a Monday session in Paris, where they discussed boosting defense spending and potential security guarantees for Ukraine.
There was division on the idea of deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine as part of a potential end to the war, with governments such as Britain and Sweden expressing openness to the idea while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that discussion was premature.
Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
