There was a time when Marco Rubio regarded President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a “gangster,” a “war criminal” and a “thug.”
By his own admission, Mr. Rubio, now President Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser, has since undergone a transformation on foreign policy. Once quick to criticize the wing of the Republican Party skeptical of foreign interventions and those who would seek accommodation with Russia, Mr. Rubio began adapting to Mr. Trump’s views years ago.
He is now helping steer the administration through fitful negotiations with the Kremlin to bring an end to the bloody assault on Ukraine begun by Mr. Putin.
Mr. Trump has now delegated to Mr. Rubio an especially tricky job: negotiating with European leaders to produce proposed security guarantees for Ukraine.
It is perhaps the highest-profile role Mr. Rubio has taken on. It will require him to balance Mr. Trump’s insistence that no American troops be stationed in Ukraine against the need to reassure President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that his country will have backup should Mr. Putin violate any peace deal and attack again.
Mr. Rubio will have to persuade the Europeans that the mercurial Mr. Trump will stick to his commitment to help them defend Ukraine without doing so under the banner of NATO. And even though Mr. Trump asserted recently that Mr. Putin had accepted Ukraine’s need for security guarantees, Mr. Putin’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that Russia would insist on being part of any security plan for Ukraine, making the process of creating a proposal that could lead to a peace deal that much more fraught.
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The post Rubio Takes on Tricky Task of Drafting Security Guarantees for Ukraine appeared first on New York Times.
