US secretary of state says talks between Putin and Trump had ‘made progress’ but ‘big areas of disagreement’ remain
In a combative series of interviews on Sunday, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said that “both sides are going to have to make concessions” for there to be a peaceful resolution to the war that erupted when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
“You can’t have a peace agreement unless both sides make concessions – that’s a fact,” the Trump administration’s top diplomat said Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “That’s true in virtually any negotiation. If not, it’s just called surrender. And neither side is going to surrender. So both sides are going to have to make concessions.”
Rubio said the recent talks in Alaska between Russian president Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump toward ending the war had “made progress in the sense that we identified potential areas of agreement – but there remains some big areas of disagreement”.
“We’re still a long ways off,” Rubio added. “We’re not at the precipice of a peace agreement. We’re not at the edge of one. But I do think progress was made and towards one.”
