Rubio: Ball in Russia’s court after Ukraine backs ceasefire proposal
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it is dependent on Russia to accept a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine for immediate negotiations toward an end of the war to begin.
Rubio made his remarks following a meeting with senior Ukrainian officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that served to repair U.S. and Ukrainian relations, with the Trump administration restarting military and intelligence assistance that was paused in the aftermath of an Oval Office argument late last month.
The Ukrainians expressed a readiness to accept the ceasefire, Rubio said, adding the U.S. will deliver the offer to Russia through multiple diplomatic channels.
“Our hope is that the Russians will say yes, that they will also agree, so the shooting will stop, the killing will stop, the dying will stop, and the talks can begin about how to end this war permanently, in a way that’s acceptable and enduring for both sides.”
Russia launched heavy attacks against Ukraine, including a large-scale drone assault, on the third-anniversary of the war — Feb. 24 — and firing cruise and ballistic missiles earlier this week amid the pause in U.S. military assistance.
Ukraine responded with its largest drone attack against Russia, with at least 91 drones shot down over Moscow and more than 240 drones targeting other areas across Russia.
Bloomberg reported that sources close to Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled he is willing to discuss a temporary truce in Ukraine.
President Trump said he believes Putin wants peace and said, “I think we’re doing very well with Russia,” in remarks to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
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Ukraine may keep fighting a guerrilla war, regardless of a ‘peace deal’
Drone warfare could allow Ukraine to continue fighting at lost cost -
Polling in Ukraine shows that most people now want the war to end with a peace deal, rather than fighting on to retrieve the land seized by Russia. Recent developments have proved to those who did not already know it, that there can be no victory without dramatically increased support from the US, which did not happen under Biden and is certainly not going to happen under Trump.
They know therefore that Ukraine will have to cede territory, a reality underscored yesterday by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Obviously not trusting Putin, whatever deal he might agree to, Ukrainians want a back-stop from the West. Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff, said today that “Ukraine must be given security guarantees that lend credibility to a future ceasefire agreement”. According to Trump, such guarantees will have to come from the Europeans. The Europeans are not in a position to give any guarantees whatsoever; and Starmer’s proposed peacekeeping force, if it were to happen, would certainly not supply them.
Yarmak also said that Europe must apply economic pressure to prevent Putin returning to the attack by sanctions and seizing frozen Russian assets. European sanctions would count for little without US support and it seems unlikely that governments would be bold enough to take control of frozen assets given the legal difficulties. In any case, despite the voluble rhetoric, they are desperate to get back to business as usual with the Kremlin. After all, since the war began, Europeans have collectively been paying more to Russia in oil and gas revenues than they have provided in financial aid to Ukraine.
Most Ukrainians may simply resign themselves to their fate: loss of 20 per cent of their territory and nothing to stop Putin surging back to the offensive after regrouping his armed forces and rebuilding his economy. But many will not. At the front line I have met several hardened Ukrainian commanders who told me they would never give up the fight against Russia, no matter what the politicians decide. In other circumstances this talk could be dismissed as mere braggadocio.
But such men and their followers in Ukraine today may have far greater power than their predecessors in global resistance movements ever dreamt of. For one thing Ukraine is awash with vast amounts of weaponry of all sorts, much unaccounted for. Some is no doubt already stashed across the sweeping territories of Ukraine in arms dumps unknown to the military or civil authorities, against the day.
As we saw demonstrated last night in the largest ever drone attack on Moscow, Ukraine has become one of the largest producers of tactical and strategic drones in the world. Zelensky says his country produced 2.2 million UAVs last year alone. Used for surveillance and attack, those drones that have been liberated from the military supply chain could provide significant combat power to the men who decided to fight on. Likewise, unrestrained cyber attacks could cause havoc against strategically important installations in both occupied territory and on Russian land.
All this could add up to making a peace deal extremely hard to manage, whatever the Ukrainian government’s determination to adhere to it. Aside from guerrilla warfare against Russia, who knows what turmoil might unfold more widely inside Ukraine itself. After a peace deal hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened soldiers will return home – to what? A country ravaged by war, depopulated and economically broken. There will be no money and for many, no employment or any prospect of it. Violent crime is likely to run rampant. And those who believe their government has capitulated to Russia, selling them out after their years of sacrifices, may seek revenge on Kyiv.
No doubt Putin will already have planned to exploit such discontent following the war. He is likely to do whatever he needs to encourage Ukrainian breaches of the peace agreement in order to “legitimately” retaliate. And he will understand that helping foment instability and insurrection may be another way of achieving his original war aim of bringing down the government in Kyiv.
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