“Every side’s going to have to give something”: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says peace depends on Moscow and Kyiv making concessions

Newly sworn-in U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that ending Russia's war in Ukraine will be an official U.S. policy under President Donald Trump, Reuters reports.

The 53-year-old Rubio, a China hawk and strong supporter of Israel, was the first member of Trump’s cabinet to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. During his confirmation hearing last week, Rubio stressed that resolving the war in Ukraine would require compromises from both Moscow and Kyiv. He suggested that Ukraine might need to reconsider its ambition to reclaim all territories seized by Russia over the past decade — a position he echoed in an interview to NBC's “Today” show on Tuesday ahead of his swearing-in.

“It’s going to be the official policy of the United States that the war has to end, and we’re going to do everything possible to bring that about,” he said.

Former President Joe Biden, who authorized billions in U.S. military aid to Ukraine following Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, maintained that the decision about whether to pursue peace talks with Russia should be made solely by Ukraine.

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump claimed he would swiftly end the war, but he did not elaborate on his plan to achieve this. One of Trump’s repeated promises saw him claim he would end the three-year conflict “in 24 hours” — a deadline he has already missed. The once-and-current U.S. President declared himself a “peacemaker” during his inaugural address at the Capitol Building on Jan. 20.

Rubio, for his part, said the peace process would be “complicated...because every side's going to have to give something.”

“The only way conflicts like this end is…not in public pronouncements,” Rubio said. “They end in hard, vibrant diplomacy that the U.S. seeks to engage in, in the hopes of bringing an end to this conflict that’s sustainable, in a way that assures the security of Ukraine and our partners in the region, but that stops the killing and the dying and the destruction that we’ve been seeing for quite a while now.”

During his remarks at the White House on Tuesday following his swearing-in, Rubio pledged to implement Trump’s foreign policy agenda of “furthering the national interest of this country.”

He also emphasized that under Trump, another key foreign policy objective would be “the promotion of peace — peace through strength, of course, and peace that never compromises our values.”