'The Ball Is Truly In Their Court': Rubio Says Onus To Accept Ceasefire Deal On Russia

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Speaking to reporters in Shannon, Ireland, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Russia must now accept the ceasefire deal with Ukraine.

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00:00response officially? And are they willing to accept the ceasefire unconditionally?

00:05Well, I mean, we don't know the answer to the last question. That's what we want to know,

00:08whether they're prepared to do it unconditionally. We'll have contact with them today. There's

00:12already been contacts at different levels with counterparts, different members of the

00:16administration, and that'll continue. But as far as the Russian reaction to it, that's really the

00:23question here. And that is, you know, this is a few hours old. We're going to bring it to them

00:28directly. We're going to say that Ukraine is prepared to stop all battlefield activity and

00:34begin the immediate process of negotiating a enduring end to the war. And we'll see what

00:39their response is. If their response is yes, then we know we've made real progress and there's a

00:43real chance of peace. If their response is no, it would be highly unfortunate and it would make

00:48their intentions clear. So that's what we're hoping to hear from them. And obviously, as I

00:53said, this was not prearranged for them. So they're probably processing the news the same

00:59as the rest of the world is. So we hope to have a positive answer from them. The ball

01:02is truly in their court.

01:05Nike Chun with Voice of America. What would be a good G7 joint statement on Russia and on China?

01:14Well, I think the perfect statement would be that the United States has done a good thing for the

01:18world in bringing this process forward. And now we all eagerly await the Russian response and

01:26urge them strongly to consider ending all hostilities so people will stop dying, so

01:31bullets will stop flying, and so a process can begin to find a permanent peace. I think the

01:36first step in all this is the acceptance that there is no military solution to this conflict.

01:40Neither side can militarily achieve their maximalist gains, their maximalist goals.

01:45Neither side can achieve them through the military side. The only way this conflict can end

01:50is through negotiation. That's the only way you're going to have peace, is through negotiation.

01:54And so we need to start that process. And it is hard to start a process when people are

01:58shooting at each other and people are dying. And so our hope is that we can stop that,

02:03all these hostilities, and get to a negotiating table where both sides over some period of time

02:09with a lot of hard work can find a mutually acceptable outcome that, in the case of Ukraine,

02:14obviously secures their long-term prosperity and security.

02:17Q Mr. Secretary, could you just update us on Mr. Whitkoff's plans for Moscow and whether he'll

02:24be meeting with President Putin? And then separately, if you wouldn't mind elaborating

02:27on something that Mr. Waltz said yesterday about the specifics that you discussed with the Ukrainians

02:31about what the end of the war would look like. You had mentioned we're not going to get maps

02:35out and draw lines, but did you actually talk about territorial concessions?

02:38SECRETARY POMPEO We had conversations. As far as Steve's trip,

02:42I'm not here to – I can't – I'm not going to make any announcements about specific dates,

02:45times, or even confirm such a trip. Suffice it to say there's going to be

02:49multiple points of contact with the Russians to gauge are they willing to do this or not.

02:56And as far as the conversations that were yesterday, yeah, when you sit down with a

03:00counterpart like Ukraine, we're not going to negotiate this publicly. We're not going to

03:05actually put out there sort of what we talked about, because in any negotiation there's certainly

03:10an element where you don't want one side to be giving away all this leverage from a public

03:14perspective. We had a broad conversation about what it would – but I think the bulk of our

03:20conversation was what a negotiation process would look like in terms of not the specific conditions

03:26but rather the timing of it, sort of the steps they would like to see taken. The Ukrainians

03:30made very clear that this isn't just about ending a war. They need to get their prisoners of war

03:34back. They need to get the children back. They'd like to see an exchange of prisoners of war.

03:39They'd like to see their children back. So there's all sorts of things tied to the humanitarian

03:44assistance is important as well. There are areas of Ukraine that have been badly damaged that require

03:49immediate assistance. So these are the sorts of things that we talked about as being inclusive

03:54in the negotiation process. So really, the bulk of our conversation when we got to that stage of it

03:59was discussing the kinds of items that need to be on a new negotiation agenda

04:04even when we hopefully get there.

04:05He also mentioned security guarantees, which is something that there has been some reluctance for

04:10the administration to elaborate on. Are you committing to security guarantees?

04:13Well, I think the point – no, the point to understand is that we're looking at is securing

04:16their long-term – what we want to see, like any country in the world, Ukraine wants their

04:20long-term security. They want to make sure that this doesn't happen, and we all do.

04:24What is the point of spending all this time to get a ceasefire hopefully and then a negotiated

04:29end to the war only to see it re-spark up again in about six years, four years, three years? No

04:34one's – we're not interested in that, and they certainly aren't either. So I think the question

04:38really is more about a deterrence. Can Ukraine create a sufficient deterrent against future

04:44aggression, against future attack, against future invasion? Because every country in the world has

04:48a right to defend themselves, and no one can dispute that. So that will most certainly have

04:52to be part of the conversation. But again, I don't think there's – there isn't a peace to secure

04:57until you have a peace. But there's no way to have an enduring peace without the deterrence

05:02peace being a part of it. Can I just follow up on that? Yes. Because the joint statement talks

05:07about European partners being involved in the peace process, but that's only attributed to the

05:12Ukrainian delegation. There doesn't appear to be U.S. support for that line. Well, I think what

05:16it says in the statement is that they raised the need for the Europeans. But I've already said

05:20publicly the Europeans have issued a series of sanctions against the Russian Federation,

05:25and I would imagine that in any negotiation, if we get there hopefully with the Russians,

05:29that they will raise these European – the European sanctions that have been imposed upon

05:36them. So I think that the issue of European sanctions are going to be on the table, not to

05:40mention what happens with the frozen assets and the like. And so I think it's self-evident that

05:44for there to be a peace in Ukraine, at the end of that process there's going to have to be some

05:51decision made by the Europeans about what they're going to do with these sanctions and so forth.

05:56And so that's why I think they have to be necessarily involved in this regard.

05:59Now, whether they're involved at the front end of it or at the back end of it, it'll have to

06:03play itself out. And then obviously there's also all sorts of security promises that European

06:09countries have made to Ukraine, that that will also be, I imagine, a part of this conversation

06:13as we move forward. So we don't disagree with that statement. I think the statement just reflects

06:17that they raised it. Do you back European peacekeepers in Ukraine, which is something

06:21Russia is categorizing? Well, we'll see. I mean, there's different ways to construct a deterrent

06:28on the ground that prevents another war from starting in the future. We're not going to go

06:32in with any sort of preconceived notion. The bottom line is it needs to be something that

06:37makes Ukraine feel as if they can deter and prevent a future invasion. How that looks and

06:42how that's put together, that's what we're going to be talking about. If we can get to that stage.

06:46Again, right now we're just trying to get to the stage where there's actual

06:49diplomacy happening. Here's what we'd like the world to look like in a few days.

06:53Neither side is shooting at each other, not rockets, not missiles, not bullets,

06:57nothing, not artillery. The shooting stops, the fighting stops, and the talking starts.

07:02That's what we want to see. What happens during that talking and how that evolves,

07:06I think we're going to have to be flexible and nimble and creative and patient and work hard

07:10at it and hopefully turn it into something that's concrete. You've covered – many of you have

07:15covered foreign policy for years. That's how these things happen, and they're not easy,

07:19and sometimes they're difficult to predict which way they're going to go in terms of

07:22the specifics of it. But we just want to get to that stage. That would be, for lack of a better

07:28term, a good problem to have, to have to figure out how to negotiate a peace because we're actually

07:32negotiating a peace while the shooting has stopped.

07:35Is the mineral deal essentially the security guarantee that you

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