CNN
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If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, the United States needs to abandon its efforts within “days” and move on, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday.
“We need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable,” he told reporters before departing Paris, where he had held high-level talks with European and Ukrainian officials.
The comments come a day after he and special envoy Steve Witkoff met with the European and Ukrainian allies as US President Donald Trump’s administration pushes for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
A US-authored outline of a peace plan had received an “encouraging reception” at the talks, according to a State Department readout, which did not give details on the outline. Rubio also spoke with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and conveyed the same outline, the readout said.
Speaking Friday, Rubio said he and Witkoff had come to Paris to “begin to talk about more specific outlines of what it might take to end the war” and whether or not this is a war that can be ended.
“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.
“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,” he 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.”
Meanwhile, Russia launched a missile attack on Ukraine overnight, hitting a residential neighborhood of the city of Kharkiv. The strike killed one person and wounded 67 others, authorities said Friday, adding they feared more people could be trapped beneath the rubble of a damaged apartment building.
Rubio’s words of warning on Friday come after the US and Ukraine moved closer toward clinching an agreement on a minerals deal on Thursday night.
Kyiv and Washington have now signed a memorandum as a move towards the proposed agreement, Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
“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,” Svyrydenko said in a post on X.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had said earlier Thursday that a memorandum related to the deal could be signed remotely that day.
“This document is the result of the professional work of the negotiating teams, which recently completed another round of technical discussions in Washington,” Svyrydenko continued. “Ahead is the finalization of the text of the agreement and its signing — and then, ratification by parliaments.”
“There is a lot to do, but the current pace and significant progress give reason to expect that the document will be very beneficial for both countries,” Svyrydenko concluded.
An earlier iteration of the minerals deal went unsigned following a public argument between Zelensky and Trump in February.
Details of the proposed deal have since been in flux, with Treasury officials meeting a Ukrainian delegation in Washington this week to hammer it out, sources told CNN.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
