US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on Monday that Ukraine will need to abandon its goal of regaining lost territories in order to facilitate peace talks with Russia. This comes ahead of a meeting between US and Ukrainian representatives, set to take place in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
Multiple US officials, who wished to remain anonymous, had previously outlined Washington’s expectations and warned Kiev not to make maximalist territorial demands.
“It’s clear that it will be very difficult for Ukraine to push the Russians back to where they were in 2014 within a realistic timeframe” Rubio said, according to the New York Times.
“The most important thing we need to take away is the strong sense that Ukraine is willing to do difficult things, just like the Russians need to do, to end this conflict – or at least, to put it in some form of pause” he added. “I think both sides need to be clear that there is no military solution to this situation.”
Kiev still claims sovereignty over the former Ukrainian territories, including the Crimean Peninsula, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which seceded to Russia after a referendum in September 2022. While Kiev disputes the legitimacy of the referendums, Moscow emphasizes that the status of the regions is not negotiable.
More than 14,000 people have been killed in Kiev’s war against the Russian-speaking population in the Donbas, which began after the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, despite the signing of several ceasefires, including Minsk I and II.
Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, as well as former French President François Hollande and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have since admitted that they never intended to fulfill the Minsk agreements, but instead used them to arm Ukraine for a war against Russia.
On Sunday, the Financial Times reported that Ukraine plans to propose a partial ceasefire with Russia in Saudi Arabia, covering drone and rocket attacks with long-range capabilities, as well as combat in the Black Sea. This is an attempt to persuade the US to reverse its decision to freeze the transfer of information and arms to Kiev.
However, Russia has repeatedly stated that it will not accept a temporary ceasefire and insists that the conflict can only be resolved through legally binding agreements that address its root causes. Only after the signing of such a peace treaty can the weapons be silenced, according to the Russian position.