Secretary Of State Marco Rubio: There Is 'Cautious Optimism' For Proposed Russia-Ukraine Ceasefire

9 hours ago

Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to reporters about Russian President Vladimir Putin's comments about a proposed Russia-Ukraine ceasefire.

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Transcript

00:00Mr. Secretary, do you have any top lines from Mr. Whitcoff?

00:04This was a late meeting.

00:05It went hours long.

00:06Is there anything that he shared?

00:08And then when you do examine the Russian position, the comments by President Putin were quite

00:12convoluted and tough to decipher.

00:14I wonder if you think that he's playing for time.

00:17Well, I think you're not going to – this is not something that's going to play out

00:21in press conferences, as I stand at a press conference.

00:25But this is – again, I go back to the point I just made.

00:28When you want – if you think about the most recent example of ceasefire negotiations,

00:34which was what happened in Gaza and with Israel and so forth, yeah, there were newspaper and

00:38there were articles and there was news stories about it.

00:40But ultimately, you found out what the results were after the fact.

00:44And in the meantime, you saw public statements from different sides in regards to what they

00:47were going to do.

00:48I think this will be no different.

00:49So certainly, we're not going to make our foreign policy decisions on the basis of what

00:55a leader says – simply says at a press conference that somebody puts up on social

01:00media posts because you're some blogger close to the Kremlin or something like that.

01:03And likewise, I don't think they're going to do that either.

01:05So I would just say that this is going to play out the way things of this nature and

01:10caliber have traditionally and normally play out, and that is with the leaders of the countries

01:16involved speaking not in front of the cameras, not in front of the media, but in these negotiations

01:21that happen and these talks that happen.

01:23So I don't want to – I'm not going to comment on what President Putin said other

01:26than he said he agreed with it in concept.

01:29So –

01:30But lots of conversations.

01:32Well, again, he said that at a press conference.

01:34As I said, and I go back to the phrase I used earlier, I think there is reason for cautious

01:38optimism that something good could come of this.

01:41Obviously, we're going to wait for Ambassador Whitkoff to return.

01:44He's not back yet.

01:45We're going to reconvene.

01:46Obviously, he – I spoke to him late last night.

01:48He spoke to the President well before that.

01:50He may have spoken to other members of our team.

01:52I've been here.

01:53But ultimately, we're going to get – we're going to reconvene and the President will

01:56have options available to him, and decisions will be made after that.

02:00But I don't want to speculate or characterize anything beyond what I've just said until

02:04we have had a chance to sit down with Ambassador Whitkoff, who's still overseas and in travel.

Secretary Of State Marco Rubio: There Is 'Cautious Optimism' For Proposed Russia-Ukraine Ceasefire

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