THE HAGUE — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday threw cold water on European calls for more sanctions on Russia.
That came as a surprise to the NATO foreign ministers Rubio met the night before at the alliance’s annual summit.
In that Tuesday night conversation during a private dinner focused on Ukraine, Rubio teased that the Senate would likely take up legislation to increase sanctions on Russia after it finishes work on President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” tax and spend measure, which he said could pass as soon as this week, according to four European diplomatic officials familiar with the meeting.
Rubio, who came under criticism at the dinner over Trump’s reluctance to toughen up on Moscow, acknowledged to his European counterparts that Russia was the problem holding back peace talks to end the Ukraine war, according to the officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the private dinner.
But hours later during an exclusive interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns on the sidelines of the NATO summit, Rubio outlined the administration’s rationale for holding off on further sanctioning Russia.
“If we did what everybody here wants us to do, and that is come in and crush them with more sanctions, we probably lose our ability to talk to them about the ceasefire and then who’s talking to them?” Rubio said, adding that Trump will know the “time and place” for changing tack.
Asked about the discrepancy, a senior U.S. official said Rubio is stressing the same main points, but his interlocutors are focusing on different parts.
“The secretary has been very consistent in meeting and calls with his counterparts on three key points — one is that the president believes strongly that the only way this war ends is through negotiations; second, as soon as the U.S. imposes new sanctions on Russia the opportunity for the U.S. to be involved in those negotiations closes; and third, that the Senate, in America anyway, is an independent body that at some point is going to move on those sanctions,” the official said.
Sanctions bill in Congress
Although the sanctions bill by Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, has more than 80 co-sponsors, which is more than enough to override a potential presidential veto, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, has indicated that he prefers to wait for a signal that Trump supports the measure before taking it up.
The White House is working with Graham and others on the substance of the bill to make sure it preserves options for Trump, Rubio told POLITICO.
“Lindsey Graham has a bill, and others, and that may happen,” Rubio said. “We’ve talked to them about how to frame it, how to structure it, because ultimately, we think it needs to have enough flexibility for the president to be able to impose sanctions, and we haven’t taken off any of the sanctions that we have on.”
But even at a buttoned-up summit where NATO officials have been wary of saying or doing anything to upset Trump ahead of the formal adoption of a new spending pledge, some Europeans have been venting quietly about the administration’s lack of urgency about the war in Ukraine.
“At a certain point, it’s going to look like Putin is playing Trump for a fool,” one of the European diplomats said of the Russian president. “Trump says he wants to end the war. And the only way the war is going to end is if we increase the amount of pressure on Putin.”
That pushback was evident at Tuesday night’s dinner meeting of NATO foreign ministers. While most countries explicitly thanked Trump and congratulated him on the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, and Rubio acknowledged that Russia has been a problem holding back peace efforts in Ukraine, others came with a stern message for the Trump administration.
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski — who has publicly sparred with Rubio over Elon Musk’s threats to turn off Starlink for Ukraine — called out the top U.S. diplomat directly in the dinner meeting and said that Russia is disrespecting Trump by violating the ceasefire.
Russia’s continued blasting of Kyiv with drone attacks “should not come for free,” Sikorski told Rubio at the meeting, according to a second European diplomat.
The European Union is expected to soon ram through a new sanctions package that would attempt to squeeze Russia’s oil revenue by cutting the price cap on the Kremlin’s petroleum exports at sea. That would come despite resistance from Hungary and Slovakia, which have protested the bloc’s plans to phase out buying fossil fuels from Moscow by 2027. But European officials believe they will need American leverage — and more financial pressure on the Kremlin — to get back to the negotiating table.
Meanwhile, Rubio has presented different fronts to allies before of the camera and when meeting in private. Behind closed doors, Baltic and Nordic countries have come to see Rubio as an ally within the Trump administration who has no illusions about Russia and China, even if his public rhetoric doesn’t always reflect that, according to the second European diplomatic official.
“The question still on everyone’s mind is that Trump has the power to end the war, by applying pressure [on Russia],” the European diplomat said. “Here he will be given a tool.
Paul McLeary contributed to this report.
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