Washington (TDI): US Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted Tuesday that President Donald Trump had offered no concessions to Russia, as he rejected criticism over the administration’s Ukraine policy at a Senate hearing.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t gotten a single concession,” Rubio said. He was responding to Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
She criticized that Trump, since returning to the White House, has given the Russian President more incentive to drag out talks and seize more territory.
Rubio said that Trump does not want to impose new sanctions on Moscow. If, in fact, it is clear that the Russians are not interested in a peace agreement and they just want to keep fighting a war, it may very well come to that point, he added.
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Trump believes that if the US start threatening sanctions, the Russians will stop negotiating, Rubio said.
Washington briefly stopped US military and intelligence aid to Ukraine after a disastrous meeting on February 28 with President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom Trump accused of ingratitude for past US assistance.
Pressed on whether the US was still meeting Kyiv’s defense requirements, Rubio acknowledged trouble providing anti-missile Patriots but stated it was a logistical matter.
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“To the extent that the Ukrainians have requested for anything further, what they’ve asked for is air defenses – Patriot units – which, we don’t have,” Rubio said.
He said Washington was asking NATO allies to transfer Patriots to Ukraine to defend airspace over Kyiv and elsewhere.
Farkhund Yousafzai is an Associate Editor at The Diplomatic Insight.
