The United States will abandon efforts to end the war in Ukraine if it proves impossible to broker meaningful progress in the next several days, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as he departed Paris after a meeting on Thursday with President Emmanuel Macron of France.
“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Mr. Rubio told reporters, adding that the Trump administration will decide “in a matter of days whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks.”
His remarks ratcheted up pressure on Russia and Ukraine to end the war and appeared intended to inject urgency into European efforts to prod Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, toward compromise. While the United States is Russia’s chief interlocutor in the negotiations, Europe has far greater sway over Mr. Zelensky. President Trump said on Thursday that he was “not a big fan” of the Ukrainian leader.
Mr. Rubio said Mr. Trump “has spent 87 days at the highest level of this government repeatedly making efforts to bring this war to an end. We are now reaching a point when we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not.”
High-level talks on Thursday between American, European and Ukrainian officials were the first of their kind, intended to bring “convergence” between views of the war in Washington and European capitals. Mr. Rubio said the conversations had been constructive, but it appeared clear that Mr. Trump was losing patience.
“It is not our war. We didn’t start it,” Mr. Rubio said. “The United States has been helping Ukraine for the past three years and we want it to end, but it’s not our war.”
Mr. Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s envoy, have led the American diplomacy aimed at ending the war, which has festered for more than three years. Mr. Witkoff has met with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia multiple times and said he was trying to develop a “friendship, a relationship” with the Russian leader.
But Mr. Putin has balked, setting various conditions even for a 30-day cease-fire. The Russian bombardment of Ukraine continues.
The officials who took part in the Paris talks have agreed to meet next week in London, and Mr. Rubio indicated he might participate. He said he hoped Europeans would remain engaged in the efforts to secure a peace in Ukraine. Mr. Putin’s demands — among them that Ukraine cede territory that Russia has occupied and abandon its attempts to join NATO — have been rejected outright by Ukraine.
“I think the U.K. and France and Germany can help us move the ball on this and then get this closer to a resolution,” Mr. Rubio told reporters at Le Bourget airport as he prepared to depart. “I thought they were very helpful and constructive with their ideas.”
But it appears that Mr. Trump is in a hurry and time is limited.