Speaking to reporters in Shannon, Ireland, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Russia must now accept the ceasefire deal with Ukraine.
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00:00response officially? And are they willing to accept the ceasefire unconditionally?
00:05Well, I mean, we don't know the answer to the last question. That's what we want to know,
00:08whether they're prepared to do it unconditionally. We'll have contact with them today. There's
00:12already been contacts at different levels with counterparts, different members of the
00:16administration, and that'll continue. But as far as the Russian reaction to it, that's really the
00:23question here. And that is, you know, this is a few hours old. We're going to bring it to them
00:28directly. We're going to say that Ukraine is prepared to stop all battlefield activity and
00:34begin the immediate process of negotiating a enduring end to the war. And we'll see what
00:39their response is. If their response is yes, then we know we've made real progress and there's a
00:43real chance of peace. If their response is no, it would be highly unfortunate and it would make
00:48their intentions clear. So that's what we're hoping to hear from them. And obviously, as I
00:53said, this was not prearranged for them. So they're probably processing the news the same
00:59as the rest of the world is. So we hope to have a positive answer from them. The ball
01:02is truly in their court.
01:05Nike Chun with Voice of America. What would be a good G7 joint statement on Russia and on China?
01:14Well, I think the perfect statement would be that the United States has done a good thing for the
01:18world in bringing this process forward. And now we all eagerly await the Russian response and
01:26urge them strongly to consider ending all hostilities so people will stop dying, so
01:31bullets will stop flying, and so a process can begin to find a permanent peace. I think the
01:36first step in all this is the acceptance that there is no military solution to this conflict.
01:40Neither side can militarily achieve their maximalist gains, their maximalist goals.
01:45Neither side can achieve them through the military side. The only way this conflict can end
01:50is through negotiation. That's the only way you're going to have peace, is through negotiation.
01:54And so we need to start that process. And it is hard to start a process when people are
01:58shooting at each other and people are dying. And so our hope is that we can stop that,
02:03all these hostilities, and get to a negotiating table where both sides over some period of time
02:09with a lot of hard work can find a mutually acceptable outcome that, in the case of Ukraine,
02:14obviously secures their long-term prosperity and security.
02:17Q Mr. Secretary, could you just update us on Mr. Whitkoff's plans for Moscow and whether he'll
02:24be meeting with President Putin? And then separately, if you wouldn't mind elaborating
02:27on something that Mr. Waltz said yesterday about the specifics that you discussed with the Ukrainians
02:31about what the end of the war would look like. You had mentioned we're not going to get maps
02:35out and draw lines, but did you actually talk about territorial concessions?
02:38SECRETARY POMPEO We had conversations. As far as Steve's trip,
02:42I'm not here to – I can't – I'm not going to make any announcements about specific dates,
02:45times, or even confirm such a trip. Suffice it to say there's going to be
02:49multiple points of contact with the Russians to gauge are they willing to do this or not.
02:56And as far as the conversations that were yesterday, yeah, when you sit down with a
03:00counterpart like Ukraine, we're not going to negotiate this publicly. We're not going to
03:05actually put out there sort of what we talked about, because in any negotiation there's certainly
03:10an element where you don't want one side to be giving away all this leverage from a public
03:14perspective. We had a broad conversation about what it would – but I think the bulk of our
03:20conversation was what a negotiation process would look like in terms of not the specific conditions
03:26but rather the timing of it, sort of the steps they would like to see taken. The Ukrainians
03:30made very clear that this isn't just about ending a war. They need to get their prisoners of war
03:34back. They need to get the children back. They'd like to see an exchange of prisoners of war.
03:39They'd like to see their children back. So there's all sorts of things tied to the humanitarian
03:44assistance is important as well. There are areas of Ukraine that have been badly damaged that require
03:49immediate assistance. So these are the sorts of things that we talked about as being inclusive
03:54in the negotiation process. So really, the bulk of our conversation when we got to that stage of it
03:59was discussing the kinds of items that need to be on a new negotiation agenda
04:04even when we hopefully get there.
04:05He also mentioned security guarantees, which is something that there has been some reluctance for
04:10the administration to elaborate on. Are you committing to security guarantees?
04:13Well, I think the point – no, the point to understand is that we're looking at is securing
04:16their long-term – what we want to see, like any country in the world, Ukraine wants their
04:20long-term security. They want to make sure that this doesn't happen, and we all do.
04:24What is the point of spending all this time to get a ceasefire hopefully and then a negotiated
04:29end to the war only to see it re-spark up again in about six years, four years, three years? No
04:34one's – we're not interested in that, and they certainly aren't either. So I think the question
04:38really is more about a deterrence. Can Ukraine create a sufficient deterrent against future
04:44aggression, against future attack, against future invasion? Because every country in the world has
04:48a right to defend themselves, and no one can dispute that. So that will most certainly have
04:52to be part of the conversation. But again, I don't think there's – there isn't a peace to secure
04:57until you have a peace. But there's no way to have an enduring peace without the deterrence
05:02peace being a part of it. Can I just follow up on that? Yes. Because the joint statement talks
05:07about European partners being involved in the peace process, but that's only attributed to the
05:12Ukrainian delegation. There doesn't appear to be U.S. support for that line. Well, I think what
05:16it says in the statement is that they raised the need for the Europeans. But I've already said
05:20publicly the Europeans have issued a series of sanctions against the Russian Federation,
05:25and I would imagine that in any negotiation, if we get there hopefully with the Russians,
05:29that they will raise these European – the European sanctions that have been imposed upon
05:36them. So I think that the issue of European sanctions are going to be on the table, not to
05:40mention what happens with the frozen assets and the like. And so I think it's self-evident that
05:44for there to be a peace in Ukraine, at the end of that process there's going to have to be some
05:51decision made by the Europeans about what they're going to do with these sanctions and so forth.
05:56And so that's why I think they have to be necessarily involved in this regard.
05:59Now, whether they're involved at the front end of it or at the back end of it, it'll have to
06:03play itself out. And then obviously there's also all sorts of security promises that European
06:09countries have made to Ukraine, that that will also be, I imagine, a part of this conversation
06:13as we move forward. So we don't disagree with that statement. I think the statement just reflects
06:17that they raised it. Do you back European peacekeepers in Ukraine, which is something
06:21Russia is categorizing? Well, we'll see. I mean, there's different ways to construct a deterrent
06:28on the ground that prevents another war from starting in the future. We're not going to go
06:32in with any sort of preconceived notion. The bottom line is it needs to be something that
06:37makes Ukraine feel as if they can deter and prevent a future invasion. How that looks and
06:42how that's put together, that's what we're going to be talking about. If we can get to that stage.
06:46Again, right now we're just trying to get to the stage where there's actual
06:49diplomacy happening. Here's what we'd like the world to look like in a few days.
06:53Neither side is shooting at each other, not rockets, not missiles, not bullets,
06:57nothing, not artillery. The shooting stops, the fighting stops, and the talking starts.
07:02That's what we want to see. What happens during that talking and how that evolves,
07:06I think we're going to have to be flexible and nimble and creative and patient and work hard
07:10at it and hopefully turn it into something that's concrete. You've covered – many of you have
07:15covered foreign policy for years. That's how these things happen, and they're not easy,
07:19and sometimes they're difficult to predict which way they're going to go in terms of
07:22the specifics of it. But we just want to get to that stage. That would be, for lack of a better
07:28term, a good problem to have, to have to figure out how to negotiate a peace because we're actually
07:32negotiating a peace while the shooting has stopped.
07:35Is the mineral deal essentially the security guarantee that you