US says it could be ‘very critical week’ for Ukraine deal

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that the coming week could be “very critical” for efforts to end the war in Ukraine, as President Donald Trump puts pressure on Moscow and Kyiv to make a deal.

Trump -- who met Saturday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral -- has shown increasing impatience with both sides, and suggested Russia’s Vladimir Putin maybe “doesn’t want to stop the war”.

“We’re close, but we’re not close enough,” Rubio told NBC’s “Meet the Press” news programme, adding: “I think this is going to be a very critical week.”

“We have to make a determination about whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in, or if it’s time to sort of focus on some other issues that are equally, if not more, important in some cases,” he added.

Rubio said there were still “reasons to be optimistic, but there are reasons to be realistic as well” about the chances for an agreement to end the conflict triggered by Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

The US secretary of state reiterated there would be “no military solution” to the war.

“The only solution to this war is a negotiated settlement where both sides are going to have to give up something they claim to want and are going to have to give the other side something they wish they didn’t,” he said.

US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, speaking on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” said Sunday that there had been a “number of discussions of territory” with Moscow and Kyiv, without offering more detail.

Trump was quoted as saying in a Time magazine interview released Friday that “Crimea will stay with Russia. And Zelensky understands that”.