Sec. Marco Rubio Touts Capitol Hill’s Push To ‘Increase Sanctions’ On Russia To Advance Peace Talks

12 hours ago

During a press conference at NATO headquarters on Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about putting pressure on advancing peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

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Transcript

00:00Mr. Secretary, you mentioned that you met with Kirill Dmitriev as well.

00:03In order to stop them from dragging their feet and dragging this on, is there anything

00:07that you said, perhaps not threats, but is there anything that you said you wanted to

00:11see concretely from the Russian side in order to...

00:14There's peace.

00:15We want to see peace.

00:16But specifics in terms of getting to this ceasefire first and then the negotiations

00:19later?

00:20Yeah, I mean, peace means you stop shooting at each other.

00:21I mean, it's as simplistic as that.

00:22Now, obviously, look, there are all kinds of conditions for a final peace, and you have

00:25to work with both sides.

00:26And I've said from the beginning, the only way a war ends in a negotiated settlement,

00:30if it's not an unconditional surrender, then it is both sides make concessions.

00:35We're not going to prejudge what those concessions are, because those concessions will depend

00:38on what Ukraine will accept and Russia will accept.

00:40But we have to make concrete steps towards peace.

00:42What we're not interested in, and I'm not accusing them of this, I'm just telling you

00:46what we're not interested in is negotiations about negotiations, that we're not going to

00:50continue this forever.

00:51So none of it was threatening.

00:52I think it was more an explanation of, this is our timeline, and at some point, it'll

00:56be clear whether you want peace or you don't want peace.

00:59And that time is coming.

01:00It's pretty short.

01:01At the same time, as we now have seen, members of Congress have begun to file bills to increase

01:05sanctions.

01:06So there is going to be growing pressure from Capitol Hill to impose sanctions that we're

01:10not going to be able to stop if, in fact, we're not making progress towards peace.

01:14All these factors have been explained in the nicest way possible.

01:17Hopefully, he'll take that message back to Moscow, and it'll make clear that we need

01:21to begin to see real progress, or we'll have to conclude that they're not interested in

01:24peace.

01:25And I think we are, because I think it would be better for everyone.

01:27Are more talks planned?

01:29We need to hear an answer to this.

01:30I mean, talks are only, we're going to have talks as long as talks are about something.

01:35It can't be talks about talks.

01:37At the end, I think initially it was important to talk, because we hadn't talked to them

01:41in a long time.

01:42But now we've reached the stage where we need to make progress.

01:45And if we're not making progress towards peace, then we have a set of factors that we have

01:49to take into account.

01:50But hopefully, we are going to make progress towards peace.

01:53I remain optimistic that we can.

01:54It'll be hard.

01:55It'll be difficult.

01:56But I'm optimistic that we can.

Sec. Marco Rubio Touts Capitol Hill’s Push To ‘Increase Sanctions’ On Russia To Advance Peace Talks

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