US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that if it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, the United States needs to abandon its efforts and move on. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,\u201d he told reporters before departing Paris. \u201cWe need to determine very quickly now, and I\u2019m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable.\u201d <\/p>\n
The comments come a day after he and special envoy Steve Witkoff met with European and Ukrainian allies as US President Donald Trump\u2019s administration pushes for an end to Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine. <\/p>\n
A US-authored outline of a peace plan had received an \u201cencouraging reception\u201d at the talks, according to a State Department readout, which did not give details on the outline. Rubio also spoke with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and conveyed the same outline, the readout said. <\/p>\n
Speaking Friday, Rubio said he and Witkoff had come to Paris to \u201cbegin to talk about more specific outlines of what it might take to end the war\u201d and whether or not this is a war that can be ended. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s not possible, if we\u2019re so far apart that this is not going to happen then I think the president is probably at a point where he\u2019s going to say we\u2019re done,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not our war. We didn\u2019t start it. The United States has been helping Ukraine for the past three years and we want it to end, but it\u2019s not our war,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
\u201cPresident (Trump) has spent 87 days at the highest level of this government repeatedly taking efforts to bring this war to and end. We are now reaching a point when we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not. Which is why we\u2019re engaging both sides.\u201d <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Russia launched a missile attack on Ukraine overnight, hitting a residential neighborhood of the city of Kharkiv. The strike killed one person and wounded 67 others, authorities said Friday, adding they feared more people could be trapped beneath the rubble of a damaged apartment building. <\/p>\n
Rubio\u2019s words of warning on Friday come after the US and Ukraine moved closer toward clinching an agreement on a minerals deal on Thursday night. <\/p>\n
Kyiv and Washington have now signed a memorandum as a move towards the proposed agreement, Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are happy to announce the signing, with our American partners, of a Memorandum of Intent, which paves the way for an Economic Partnership Agreement and the establishment of the Investment Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine,\u201d Svyrydenko said in a post on X. <\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had said earlier Thursday that a memorandum related to the deal could be signed remotely that day. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis document is the result of the professional work of the negotiating teams, which recently completed another round of technical discussions in Washington,\u201d Svyrydenko continued. \u201cAhead is the finalization of the text of the agreement and its signing \u2014 and then, ratification by parliaments.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot to do, but the current pace and significant progress give reason to expect that the document will be very beneficial for both countries,\u201d Svyrydenko concluded. <\/p>\n
An earlier iteration of the minerals deal went unsigned following a public argument between Zelensky and Trump in February. <\/p>\n
This is a developing story and will be updated. <\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that if it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, the United States needs to abandon its efforts and move on. \u201cIf it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,\u201d he told reporters before departing Paris. \u201cWe need…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5609,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}