US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the new administration is working to achieve sustainable peace in Ukraine so that the war with Russia does not start again in 2 to 4 years.
"We're going to be committed to ending the war in a way that is sustainable, meaning we don't want the conflict to just end and then start again in 2, 3 or 4 years," Rubio told CBC television.
"We want to achieve stability," he added.
US President Donald Trump, who took office on January 20, has vowed to bring Kiev and Moscow to the negotiating table and end the full-scale war.
The Republican revealed few details on how he plans to achieve that goal, though Rubio has repeatedly said that both Ukraine and Russia will have to make concessions.
"This is a stalemate. This is a war that was started by Russia, but now it's a stalemate, a protracted bloody conflict," the top U.S. diplomat said, adding that the war is "incredibly destructive" for both Ukraine and Russia.
Still, the secretary of state said Ukraine was "paying the biggest price of all for its energy infrastructure, for its people, for the lives that have been lost, for the millions of Ukrainians who have had to leave their countries and live abroad."
Kiev has been struggling to contain the Russian offensive since the situation on the battlefield began tilting in Moscow's favor in late 2024. Faced with increasingly difficult manpower shortages, the Ukrainian military was forced to steadily cede ground to Russian forces in the eastern Donetsk region.
On January 20, Trump stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin was "destroying Russia" by not seeking an agreement to end the war. The new U.S. president said he plans to meet with his Russian counterpart soon, although he acknowledged he was unsure whether Putin was seeking an agreement through negotiations.
Since the start of his 2024 election campaign, the Republican has repeatedly said that the full-scale invasion would not have begun if he were in office at the time, and has promised to broker its end within 24 hours. He and his team have since changed the rhetoric and acknowledged the complexity of resolving the war.
When asked about the elapsed 24-hour deadline, Rubio avoided commenting on any possible timeframe and only said that ending the war would be a "priority" and a "policy of the United States." | BGNES
