US President, Donald Trump, has said the US will “take a pass” on brokering further Russia-Ukraine war talks if Moscow or Kyiv “make it very difficult” to reach a peace deal.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that he was not expecting a truce to happen in “a specific number of days” but he wanted it done “quickly”.
His comments came hours after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the US would abandon talks “if it’s not going to happen”.
“We’re not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end,” Rubio said, adding that the US had “other priorities to focus on”.
When asked about the deal between Russian and Ukraine, Trump said: “We’re talking about here people dying. We’re going to get it stopped, ideally.
“Now if, for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’ and we’re going to just take a pass.”
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and has placed a number of conditions on any potential ceasefire.
Despite the Trump administration’s initial confidence that it could secure a deal quickly, attempts to reach a full ceasefire have yet to materialise, with Washington blaming both sides.
Following a meeting with European leaders in Paris about a potential ceasefire on Thursday, Rubio told reporters on Friday: “We need to determine very quickly now – and I’m talking about a matter of days – whether or not this is doable.”
“If it’s not going to happen, then we’re just going to move on,” he said about truce talks.
He said it was clear that a peace deal would be difficult to strike but there needed to be signs it could be done soon.
Trump had said before he re-entered office that he would stop the fighting in the first 24 hours of his presidency.
