Marco Rubio, US President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee as Secretary of State, reiterated his view on Wednesday that the war in Ukraine “has to end” calling for concessions to be made by Kyiv, Washington and Moscow.
During a confirmation hearing before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio said he doubted Ukraine’s ability to push Russian troops back to the 1991 internationally recognized border because of what he claimed was a lack of manpower.
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“It’s… unrealistic to believe that somehow a nation the size of Ukraine, no matter how incompetent and no matter how much damage the Russian Federation has suffered as a result of this invasion, there’s no way Ukraine is also going to push these people all the way back to where they were on the eve of the invasion, just given the size dynamic,” Rubio said, according to CNN.
“The problem that Ukraine is facing is not that they’re running out of money, is that they’re running out of Ukrainians,” he added.
Despite his criticisms of the Kremlin over its war in Ukraine, Rubio maintained that the war has to end nonetheless, with concessions made on all sides.
“What [Russian President] Vladimir Putin has done is unacceptable, there’s no doubt about it, but this war has to end, and I think it should be the official policy of the United States that we want to see it end,” Rubio said.
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“There will have to be concessions made by the Russian Federation, but also by the Ukrainians and the United States,” he added.
Rubio’s latest statements echoed his earlier remarks, in which he criticized Moscow while simultaneously calling the war a “stalemate,” arguing that it has to end.
Rubio’s comments hinted at a departure from Washington’s current “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” policy, with the incoming administration potentially engaging in direct talks with Moscow without Kyiv’s participation according to a report by the BBC on Friday.
According to Global Conflict Tracker Russia controlled approximately 18 percent of Ukrainian sovereign territory as of Jan. 9. This included the Crimean Peninsula and parts of the Donbas annexed in 2014 and nearly the entirety of Ukraine’s Luhansk region, captured following the 2022 full-scale invasion.
Kyiv has rejected notions of exchanging territories for peace throughout the course of the war in Ukraine, but recent statements by President Volodymyr Zelensky, following Trump’s election, have shifted the focus to NATO membership and security guarantees.
While Rubio’s stance seems aligned with Trump’s public call for a swift end to the war in Ukraine, the two’s views on other issues differed during Trump’s last term as president. Rubio had co-sponsored legislation that would make it harder for Trump to withdraw from NATO by requiring two-thirds of the Senate to ratify any withdrawal.
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