By Guy Birchall
Contributing Writer
Ukraine and Russia must focus on ending the war to avoid a “very real risk” of an escalation of the conflict, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday.
Asked about comments by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alleging that Washington had paused intelligence sharing with Kyiv, the United States’ top diplomat told reporters in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, that Zelenskyy should be focused on “bringing an end to this war.”
“That’s what he should be focused on. That’s what we want everybody to be focused on. That’s what we want the Russians to be focused on. That’s what we should be focused on,” he said.
Rubio is in the Central Asian country for the C5+1 summit, an annual meeting between top U.S. officials and their counterparts from the Muslim-majority former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
The event has taken place every year since 2015. U.S. President Donald Trump hosted the leaders of the five states at the White House last year.
“We see nothing good coming from this war, and we see a lot of downside to it,” Rubio said.
He said that among the many downsides was “the very real risk of escalation and a spread” of the war into other countries.
The secretary said that this could happen as a result of a failed sabotage attack or because of a drone wandering into a neighboring nation.
Rubio said that part of drone defenses is disorienting the weapon so that it doesn’t strike its intended target, but if this caused it to hit a neighboring country, it could result in an escalation.
“It’s a very dangerous conflict — not just dangerous for Ukraine and Russia, but dangerous for the world and for the countries of Europe, especially in Eastern Europe,” he said.
Asked about a possible meeting of Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to negotiate an end to the war, Rubio said that there had been “talks of a meeting” but that he didn’t know whether it had been finalized.
However, he stressed that Trump wants to end the war, repeating the president’s assertion that it never would have started had he been in office at the time.
“We’ve done everything we can and will continue to do everything we can to help facilitate the end of that war. No one’s winning that war. People are dying every day,” Rubio said.
Moscow also said there were no firm plans for a trilateral meeting of Trump, Putin and Xi as of yet.
Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that “no substantive proposals or agreements were discussed or expressed by anyone regarding the meeting itself, or regarding the possible agenda and content of this meeting,” Russian state news agency TASS reported on Monday.
The secretary of state’s comments come as Washington continues to try to halt hostilities between Moscow and Kyiv.
On Friday, Trump issued an executive order waiving new sanctions against Russia, stating that the move would serve the U.S. national interest.
That executive order followed an earlier deal between Trump and Putin for Russia to supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel to the American and global marketplace, followed by another 500,000 tons in November and another 1 million tons expected thereafter.
Trump defended the decision to waive sanctions on Sunday, arguing that it’s essential to keeping Moscow at the negotiating table in talks aimed at ending the war.
“My decision on Russia is a very simple one. I am in the process of negotiating peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” he wrote in a Truth Social post.
“Great progress is being made, and that includes current hostage negotiations! Signing that document at this time will do that, and I can sign it later, or any time that I want!”
The move was earlier criticized by Zelenskyy, who said in a Saturday post on X that the decision to waive sanctions “seems wrong.”
“It definitely helps only the Russians. It only fuels their satisfaction and their desire to keep killing people. This certainly does not stop the war,” he said.
Zelenskyy also characterized the deal for Russia to supply diesel to the United States as a “very bad surprise,” in comments to CBS the same day.
