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Trump-Putin meeting depends on progress on ending war, Rubio says

by Kateryna Denisova February 21, 2025 10:27 AM 2 min read
Russia's President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump arrive for a group photo at the G20 Summit in Osaka on June 28, 2019. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
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A possible meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin will largely depend on whether "we can make any progress" on ending the war in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with journalist Catherine Herridge aired on X on Feb. 20.

Rubio discussed a potential Trump-Putin meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. secretary of state said.

Trump said he would "probably" meet Putin before the end of February. When asked if he expected the meeting later in 2025, the U.S. secretary of state replied that he did not know the timing.

"There isn’t going to be a meeting until we know what the meeting is going to be about," he said.

American and Russian delegations met in Riyadh on Feb. 18. No concrete decisions on peace talks were announced following the talks, but Ukraine's exclusion from the meeting sparked alarm in Kyiv and Europe.

Rubio voiced uncertainty about whether Moscow was serious about ending the war, adding that Trump wanted to know the answer before a possible meeting.

"The only way is to test them, to basically engage them and say, okay, are you serious about ending the war, and if so, what are your demands?  Are your public demands and your private demands different?" Rubio said.

"It may turn out that they don’t want to end the war.  I don’t know; we’re going to find out."

Rubio said the necessity for peace talks was "the only thing" the U.S. and Russia agreed on.

"What they (Russia) offer, what they're willing to give up, what they're willing to consider will determine whether they're serious about peace or not," he added.

Following U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia, Rubio told alarmed European officials that the Trump administration has no plans to impose the terms of any bilateral agreements with Russia on Ukraine and Europe, the New York Times reported on Feb. 21, citing an obtained summary of the call.

According to Rubio, Washington clearly understood that Russia could try to use the talks to split the West or to weaken Moscow's isolation in the world, according to the NYT. He also reportedly told European partners that Washington would not lift U.S. sanctions against Russia without a marked change in Russia's stance, but he did not rule out a limited easing of some sanctions if Moscow took the steps the U.S. administration wanted.

Trump has pushed to mediate a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia while using increasingly hostile rhetoric toward Kyiv. After accusing Ukraine of starting the war, Trump dubbed President Volodymyr Zelensky a "dictator without elections."

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