PARIS — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Friday that the Trump administration is ready to walk away from Ukraine ceasefire talks in the coming days if it becomes clear that a deal is impossible.
“We are now reaching a point where we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not,” Rubio told reporters at the airport before leaving Paris, where he had traveled to coordinate with allies.
“I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable over the next few weeks,” he added. “If it is, we’re in. If it’s not, then we have other priorities to focus on.”
Rubio’s remarks are another sign of growing impatience in the U.S. administration. During his election campaign, U.S. President Donald Trump promised to bring Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine to a swift end, but talks between Washington and Moscow have stalled in recent weeks.
The secretary of state added that while the United States is “prepared to do whatever we can to facilitate that and make sure … that [the war] ends in a durable and just way,” if that is “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, well, we are done.”
Rubio had traveled to the French capital alongside special envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg for ceasefire talks on Thursday with French President Emmanuel Macron and high-level delegations from Germany, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
Macron’s office described the meetings as the start of a “positive process in which Europeans are involved” and that the discussions would continue in London next week.
After returning from his third encounter with Russian President Vladimir Putin just days earlier, Witkoff said that Russia’s plan for an agreement hinges on “five territories of Ukraine.”
While he did not specify which regions, it’s likely he was referring to Crimea — which Moscow seized in violation of international law in 2014 — and four other Ukrainian regions that Russia illegally annexed after sham referendums in 2022 but doesn’t fully control.
Kyiv has repeatedly pushed back against agreeing to relinquish land to Russia and has called for the international community to respect its territorial integrity. But Macron’s office told reporters that any ceasefire agreement must “start from reality” and noted that “a number of territories are currently occupied by Russia.”
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