During a press briefing with Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke about Ukraine-Russia ceasefire negotiations.
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00:00Your first question, I was so fired up about that one
00:02that I forgot the other one.
00:04Oh, yes, that one, easy ones.
00:06Well, look, I think yesterday our negotiators are en route
00:09or perhaps they've already arrived after spending,
00:12I think they met with the Ukrainians twice,
00:14the Russians once.
00:14What we have here is an agreement in principle
00:17on a Black Sea ceasefire.
00:19We got two things from that.
00:20The first is we have more detailed definition
00:23of what the energy ceasefire entails.
00:26And the second is the principle concept of a Black Sea ceasefire.
00:30Obviously, after our meeting, as part of their release,
00:33the Russians detailed a number of conditions
00:36that they want to see met in order to do that.
00:39So we're going to evaluate that.
00:41Some of those conditions include sanctions that are not ours.
00:43They belong to the European Union.
00:45So we're going to be gathering and sort
00:47of when our folks get back, sitting down,
00:50going through the proposals,
00:51getting their impressions of the conversations
00:53so we can more fully understand what the Russian position is
00:56or what their ask is in exchange.
00:58And then we'll present that to the President
00:59who will ultimately make a decision
01:00about what the next step is.
01:02I think it's a good thing that we have both the Ukrainians
01:05and the Russians talking about ceasefires, be they energy
01:08or be they potentially in the Black Sea.
01:11But obviously, this is hard and difficult work.
01:14This is a protracted three and almost three
01:16and a half year war now or three year war.
01:20It has, you know, a lot of framework of sanctions
01:26that have been built globally now that have to be looked
01:29at as part of an ultimate end to a conflict.
01:32There's a lot of things that have to be worked through.
01:34And I certainly think the only way you're going to make progress
01:37on these things is by engaging with both sides,
01:39understanding their asks, their demands,
01:43and seeing what's possible.
01:44So we're going to have a chance now to sort of sit down as a team
01:46and evaluate when they arrive in detail how the meetings went
01:50with the Ukrainians, how the meetings went with Russia,
01:53what are the Russians asking for,
01:54what do the Ukrainians ask for, compare all that,
01:56and then make a decision on that basis
01:58about what comes next in this process.
02:01In the end, the goal here is peace.
02:03The goal is to end a war where people are dying.
02:05And I think everyone should be happy
02:07that the United States is engaged in a process
02:09of ending a war and bringing about peace.
02:11It's not going to be easy.
02:12It won't be simple.
02:13It'll take some time.
02:14But at least we're on that road and we're talking
02:16about these things, and we're going to test it
02:18and see what's possible.
02:19We think we owe that to the world.
02:20And the President, I continue to say, is the only leader
02:23in the world right now, President Trump,
02:25who's in a position to even get these two nations to a city
02:29to talk about these things, albeit in rooms far apart
02:34from one another when these talks are going on.
02:35But nonetheless, they're talking.
02:36It's the first time in a while
02:37that we've seen any conversation about this.
02:39But we have a lot of work yet to be done, and we'll know more
02:41after we get the readout from our teams.