Close Menu
    Neoliberalism

    Ukraine Must Cede Territory in Any Peace Deal, Rubio Says


    Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that Ukraine would have to make concessions over land that Russia had taken since 2014 as part of any agreement to end the war.

    Mr. Rubio spoke as he was flying to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for talks with senior Ukrainian officials, and 10 days after a contentious White House meeting between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. The Trump administration halted military aid to Ukraine after the blowup, which centered on Mr. Trump’s refusal to include any security guarantees in a proposed deal involving Ukraine’s natural resources.

    Mr. Rubio declined to offer the outline of a potential agreement but made clear that concessions by both sides would be central to diplomacy.

    Mr. Rubio added that it would be imperative in future talks with Moscow to determine what Russia was willing to concede.

    The talks on Tuesday likely will not delve into the proposed agreement on Ukrainian natural resources that Mr. Trump had described as compensation for U.S. military support during the three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion. He has said that an American financial interest in Ukrainian fossil fuels and rare-earth minerals would provide Ukraine with implied security.

    Although the United States has stopped sharing some intelligence with Ukraine, including satellite imagery, Mr. Rubio said it was still providing Kyiv with information that allowed it to continue defending itself against Russian attacks. He also said that there had never been a threat of removing Ukraine’s access to Starlink, the internet service company owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

    Even as the United States has been pressuring Ukraine in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has also threatened to impose additional sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s continued military activity. Mr. Rubio said that the United States was trying to demonstrate that it still had ways to coerce Russia in an effort to bring it to the negotiating table with Ukraine.

    Mr. Rubio said he and Ukrainian officials would most likely discuss the resumption of military assistance during the meetings on Tuesday. He said the U.S. position on the issue could change if he believed that Ukraine was seriously committed to peace.

    Posted by John3262005

    View 19 Comments

    19 Comments

    3. ArmAromatic6461 on

      Understandable Rubio would say this, given that he has ceded the territory of his balls to Trump and Vance

    4. Resident_Option3804 on

      If the admin was operating in good faith, this may well be said in private with Ukraine, but there would be no reason to say it publicly. 

    5. flatulentbaboon on

      The people who would rather plunge the entire world into nuclear winter before they cede an inch of their own territory were they in Ukraine’s situation are demanding that Ukraine cede vast amounts of territory.

    8. sinuhe_t on

      Basically everyone understands that this will happen. What is most important however is that there won’t be a round 3.

    10. bigwang123 on

      “Mr. Rubio said that the United States was trying to demonstrate that it still had ways to coerce Russia in an effort to bring it to the negotiating table with Ukraine.”

      The only way to do this would be to vastly increase the amount of military aid sent to Ukraine and to facilitate the destruction of Russian forces, given that there’s not much left to sanction, but that’s obviously off the table. It seems pretty clear to me that the administration does not seem to be interested in a just peace

    11. ForsakingSubtlety on

      Saying “we are ready to give you everything you want” before beginning negotiations is certainly one strategy.

    16. Throwaway98765000000 on

      Either they don’t understand what they themselves mean by “ceding territory” or they do and are just talking in circles to appear “reasonable”.

      If they mean freezing the lines, then they’re talking to ghosts and hallucinations. The Ukrainian military-political circles have been more or less open to idea, provided the freeze is backed up by tangible security guarantees. Again, this isn’t secret information.

      And if they’re talking about literally officially recognizing occupied Ukrainian land as Russian *de jure*, then that’s a nonstarter and dead in the water.

      I also don’t understand how they could engage in a territorial demarcation in that case if all four annexed regions are partially controlled by Russian forces (with their “constitution” declaring annexation of the regions in “full”). Such discussions are nonsensical in any case.

    Leave A Reply