The US will know in a few weeks whether Russia is serious about peace with Ukraine, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday, the 4th of April, after European allies blamed Moscow for obstructing the Trump administration’s call for a ceasefire, reports Reuters.
US President Donald Trump, who has vowed to end the three-year-old war quickly, has for weeks been confident that Russian President Vladimir Putin is committed to peace.
Sources have told Reuters that the White House has become more cautious about Putin’s intentions in recent days.
“We will know very soon, in a matter of weeks, not months, whether Russia is serious about peace or not. I hope they are,” Rubio said at the end of the two-day NATO meeting.
“If it [the talks] is just dragging things out, President Trump will not fall into the trap of endless negotiations about negotiations,” Rubio said.
“WE ARE TESTING WHETHER THE RUSSIANS ARE INTERESTED IN PEACE. THEIR ACTIONS – NOT THEIR WORDS, BUT THEIR ACTIONS – WILL DETERMINE WHETHER THEY ARE INTERESTED OR NOT, AND WE WANT TO FIND OUT SOONER RATHER THAN LATER.”
Moscow rejected a US proposal for a full 30-day ceasefire in March after Ukraine said it would agree. The two sides subsequently agreed to a partial ceasefire, ending attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure. Both sides accuse each other of violations. Washington says it is still negotiating with both sides.
European allies want Washington to demand that Moscow prove that it is serious and some suggest setting a specific deadline for the ceasefire.
Moscow “owes an answer to the US”, which “worked very hard to come up … with a ceasefire proposal”, said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Putin “continues to duck, continues to drag his feet”.
“He could now agree to a ceasefire, he continues to bomb Ukraine, its civilian population, its energy resources. We see you, Vladimir Putin, we know what you are doing,” Lammy said.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Putin’s talk of talks was “just empty promises” and that the Russian leader was trying to buy time by “making more and more demands”.
The foreign ministers of Canada and Estonia were among those who called for deadlines for Russia to accept a ceasefire.
A senior State Department official said late on Thursday night that there was no consensus on a timeframe for increasing pressure on Russia, but it was recognised that “the sooner the better”.
Europe’s trust in the US as the continent’s main defender against Russian attacks has been undermined in recent months by Trump’s efforts to engage with Moscow.
Asked whether ministers had received assurances from Rubio that Washington would not make concessions to Russia, Norway’s foreign minister Espen Barth Eide said: “I felt there was a broad consensus in the room on where the red lines were.”
A senior European diplomat answered the same question: “I would say he [Rubio] said all the right things. But the question is whether there is enough trust between the US and its allies.”