Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned the U.S. could “move on” from Ukraine-Russia peace talks in a matter of days.
“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” he told reporters in Paris on Friday. “We need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable.”
He made the comments just before leaving the French capital after offering the framework of a peace deal that reportedly received an “encouraging reception,” according to the State Department. Rubio was with special envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg to meet with European leaders and discuss a possible peace deal for Ukraine.
Rubio said he and Witkoff had travelled to France to “begin to talk about more specific outlines of what it might take to end the war,” but warned that the U.S. is ready to walk away.
“If it’s not possible, if we’re so far apart that this is not going to happen then I think the president is probably at a point where he’s going to say we’re done,” he said, speaking on the runway at Le Bourget airport.
He refused to go into specifics about the “broad” framework of any peace plan, saying “when you start negotiating these things through the media they fall apart.”
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, said Thursday that he felt a ceasefire was “close” and he was waiting to hear back from the Kremlin on a recent peace proposal.
“We’re going to be hearing from them this week, very shortly actually,” he said during a press conference with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in the White House.
Rubio’s tone, just hours later, could not have been more different.
“It’s not our war. We didn’t start it. The United States has been helping Ukraine for the past three years and we want it to end, but it’s not our war,” the secretary of state added.
“President (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’re engaging both sides.”
Top diplomats from the United States, Germany, the U.K. and Ukraine attended the Paris meeting.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was also provided with the outline peace plan after speaking with Rubio.
Rubio’s warning comes as the U.S. and Ukraine moved closer to signing a deal giving U.S. access to Ukrainian mineral reserves. The original planned deal was scuppered after a heated showdown between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February.
Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the Ukrainian government had signed an outline for a deal that includes a provision for an investment fund to be set up to reconstruct Ukraine.
She wrote on X late Thursday: “We 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.”
We 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. pic.twitter.com/AQsHPkWh5X
— Yulia Svyrydenko (@Svyrydenko_Y) April 17, 2025
She included a screenshot photograph showing U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signing the Memorandum of Intent over an online call.
“It’s substantially what we’d agreed on previously. When the president [Zelensky] was here, we had a memorandum of understanding,” Bessent said. “We went straight to the big deal, and I think it’s an 80-page agreement and that’s what we’ll be signing.”
Zelensky gave the go-ahead earlier Thursday to the deal being signed that day, CNN reported.
Trump gave his seal of approval during the press conference with Meloni. “We have a minerals deal which I guess is going to be signed on Thursday… next Thursday. Soon,” he said. “And I assume they’re going to live up to the deal. So we’ll see. But we have a deal on that.”
Meanwhile, Russia continued its relentless bombardment of Ukrainian civilian targets, with more lethal missile strikes on the northern cities of Sumy and Kharkiv.
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