Rubio Says U.S. to Decide in Days if End to War in Ukraine Is ‘Doable’
“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as he departed meetings in Paris.
April 18, 2025
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The United States will abandon efforts to end the war in Ukraine if it proves impossible to broker meaningful progress in the next several days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in remarks that piled pressure on Kyiv as he departed Paris on Friday.
“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Mr. Rubio told reporters a day after meeting with President Emmanuel Macron of France, adding that the Trump administration would decide “in a matter of days whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks.”
It was not entirely clear from Mr. Rubio’s remarks whether he meant that the United States would merely abandon its effort to reach a 30-day cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine, President Trump’s immediate focus, or abandon Washington’s commitments to Ukraine altogether.
But his remarks were certain to worry Ukraine, which is heavily dependent on American military support, and appeared intended to inject urgency into European efforts to prod Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, toward painful compromise. Later on Friday, Mr. Trump vented his own frustrations at the way at least one country had failed to respond to American overtures.
“If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say you’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people, and we’re just going to take a pass,” Mr. Trump said from the Oval Office. “But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”
Mr. Trump said the war was costing the lives of 2,500 soldiers every week but has put virtually no pressure on Russia to end the fighting and at one point claimed that Ukraine was responsible for the Russian invasion in 2022.
