Ukraine and Russia Should Be Focused on Ending the War, Rubio Says

Ukraine and Russia must focus on ending the war to avoid a “very real risk” of the conflict escalating, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday.

Asked about comments by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alleging that Washington had paused intelligence sharing with Kyiv, America’s top diplomat told reporters in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, that Zelenskyy should be focused on “bringing an end to this war.”

“That’s what he should be focused on. That’s what we want everybody to be focused on. That’s what we want the Russians to be focused on. That’s what we should be focused on,” he said.

Rubio is in the Central Asian country for the C5+1 summit, an annual meeting between top U.S. officials and their counterparts from the Muslim-majority former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

The event has taken place every year since 2015, with U.S. President Donald Trump hosting the leaders of the five states at the White House last year.

“We see nothing good coming from this war, and we see a lot of downside to it,” Rubio said, adding that among the many downsides was “the very real risk of escalation and a spread” of the war into other countries.

The secretary said that this could happen as a result of a failed sabotage attack or because of a drone wandering into a neighboring nation.

Rubio explained that part of drone defenses is disorienting the weapon so that it doesn’t strike its intended target, but if this caused it to hit a neighboring country, “you can see where these things can escalate.”

“It’s a very dangerous conflict—not just dangerous for Ukraine and Russia, but dangerous for the world and for the countries of Europe, especially in Eastern Europe,” he said.

Asked about a possible meeting between Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to negotiate an end to the war, Rubio said there had been “talks of a meeting” but that he didn’t know whether it had been finalized.

However, he stressed that Trump wants to end the war, repeating the president’s assertion that it never would have started had he been in office at the time.

“We’ve done everything we can and will continue to do everything we can to help facilitate the end of that war. No one’s winning that war. People are dying every day,” Rubio added.

Moscow also said there were no firm plans for a trilateral meeting between Trump, Putin, and Xi, as of yet, with Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov saying “no substantive proposals or agreements were discussed or expressed by anyone regarding the meeting itself, or regarding the possible agenda and content of this meeting,” Russian state news agency TASS reported on Oct. 19.

The secretary of state’s comments come as Washington continues to try to halt hostilities between Moscow and Kyiv.

On Oct. 16, Trump issued an executive order waiving new sanctions against Russia, stating that the move would serve the U.S. national interest.

That executive order followed an earlier deal between Trump and Putin for Russia to supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel to the American and global marketplace, followed by another 500,000 tons in November and another 1 million tons expected thereafter.

Trump defended the decision to waive sanctions on Oct. 18, arguing that it’s essential to keeping Moscow at the negotiating table in talks aimed at ending the war.

“My decision on Russia is a very simple one. I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” he wrote in a Truth Social post.

“Great progress is being made, and that includes current hostage negotiations! Signing that document at this time will do that, and I can sign it later, or any time that I want!”

The move was earlier criticized by Zelenskyy, who said in an Oct. 17 post on X that the decision to waive sanctions “seems wrong.”

“It definitely helps only the Russians. It only fuels their satisfaction and their desire to keep killing people. This certainly does not stop the war,” he said.

Zelenskyy also characterized the deal for Russia to supply diesel to the United States as a “very bad surprise,” in comments to CBS the same day.