Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the Russia-Ukraine war a “stalemate” on Thursday, telling reporters in Portugal that the Trump administration does not believe a military solution will end the conflict and warning that escalation could mean all-out regional warfare.
“Stalemates are very dangerous,” Rubio said. He told reporters the Trump administration thinks “this war needs to end in a negotiated settlement, the sooner the better.”
Ukraine has punched above its weight in the four-year-long conflict, which began in February 2022 with a Russian invasion that many international observers thought at the time could take just days for Russia to take effective control. Drone strikes deep into Russian territory and new unmanned technologies have enabled Kyiv to regain territory.
But Moscow has continued its onslaught, peppering Ukraine with ballistic missiles and drones Wednesday — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 74th birthday — killing at least 12 people. Kyiv is short on cash, its prime minister told reporters in September, as Russian strikes take out energy capacity and other critical infrastructure.
Escalation, Rubio said, “is very dangerous in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war.”
“I think and I hope that the risk of escalation is one of the things that will bring both sides to the table and willing to negotiate a settlement to this war,” he said.
President Donald Trump has recently blamed Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure for stubbornly high global diesel prices — not his seven-month-long war with Iran.
He’s urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to stop the strikes and last month said Kyiv and Moscow had agreed to an “energy ceasefire”
“What’s driving up Gasoline is no longer the Strait of Hormuz,” he wrote Monday on Truth Social. “Because Record Numbers of Barrels are coming out now on an almost daily basis, but the word, ‘Refineries,’ where Russia’s are being blown up by Ukraine, and where ours are being closed up, in Blue States, like California, by the Dumocrats.”