KYIV — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha have both been invited to a planned Feb. 12 meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.
The invites were confirmed to POLITICO by two Ukrainian diplomatic officials, granted anonymity to speak on the sensitive matter.
Ukraine has had no official contact with the new U.S. administration of President Donald Trump, so the ministerial meeting could be the first such encounter — if Rubio shows up, that is.
The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said Monday she had extended an open invitation to Rubio to attend the regular meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers, telling journalists she had asked him to come “to explain the views of the United States.”
Though Rubio panned this week’s gathering, Kallas said she later spoke with him on the phone, discussing Russia’s war in Ukraine, Iran’s malign influence and challenges posed by China.
POLITICO asked the U.S. State Department if Rubio planned to attend the Feb. 12 Brussels meeting, but did not immediately receive a response.
Kyiv’s representatives are eager to meet with their U.S. counterparts to discuss the Trump administration’s plans to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. U.S. officials have made a series of public statements on how the new administration wants to end the war, but so far have not contacted Kyiv via diplomatic channels.
The U.S. president repeatedly boasted about how quickly he would end Russia’s full-scale invasion after coming to power, while officials in Kyiv have urged that any peace deal should secure favorable terms for Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have praised Trump’s public toughness on Russia.
“We want the war to end. That’s pretty clear. You saw the president talked about [it], he wants to be a president that promotes peace and ends conflicts, and it’ll be complicated as well,” Rubio said earlier in January.
“Those are complicated things. I don’t — couldn’t put a time frame on it, other than to say that anytime you bring an end to a conflict between two sides, neither of whom can achieve their maximum goals, each side is going to have to give up something,” he added.
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