Rubio said if Russia rejects the temporary cease-fire proposal, it will ’tell us a lot about what their goals are and what their mindset is.’
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reiterated calls for Russia to enter into a 30-day cease-fire agreement with Ukraine and indicated many options remain on the negotiating table as Moscow and Kyiv work toward a more permanent end to their ongoing war.
The United States and Ukraine jointly announced the temporary cease-fire concept after concluding talks in Saudi Arabia on March 11. In a joint statement, the negotiators indicated the initial temporary cease-fire would last 30 days and could be extended if Moscow and Kyiv can make further progress in peace negotiations.
“We all eagerly await the Russian response and urge them strongly to consider ending all hostilities,” Rubio told reporters as he stopped over Ireland on March 12 on his way back to the United States.
Rubio said a “no” from Moscow on the temporary cease-fire proposal would force Washington to reexamine Russia’s real intentions in negotiations.
“If they say no, it’ll tell us a lot about what their goals are and what their mindset is,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday told reporters that Moscow is awaiting further details about the temporary cease-fire proposal. Peskov didn’t rule out the possibility of a call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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Rubio said the Trump administration would consider multiple points of contact to advance the discussions.
Ukrainian Territorial Concessions
As he spoke with reporters on Wednesday, Rubio confirmed that the meeting between U.S. and Ukrainian representatives covered Kyiv’s willingness to concede territory as a means of settling the conflict with Russia.
“We had conversations,” Rubio said of the matter.
Trump administration officials have argued that it’s unrealistic for Ukraine to expect to regain all of the territory it has lost to Russia since 2014. As he spoke with reporters on Wednesday, Rubio said both sides must agree to stop the fighting without achieving their maximal wartime goals.
Russia currently controls about 20 percent of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory, according to a Feb. 21 assessment by the Institute for the Study of War. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already proposed trading some of that Russian-controlled Ukrainian territory for Ukrainian forces withdrawing from a swath of territory they’ve held inside Russia’s Kursk border region since August.
Moscow has claimed to have retaken most of the Kursk lands it lost to Ukraine last year, but Ukrainian forces have continued to maintain a foothold inside Russia’s borders. It remains to be seen if Zelenskyy will still have a territorial bargaining chip in the Kursk region as they enter into the final stages of peace talks and whether he’ll be able to trade this patch of Russian territory for any significant section of pre-war Ukraine.
Rubio declined to provide many specifics about what terms Kyiv is prepared to accept for a peace deal.
Ukrainian soldiers aim a mortar toward Russian positions in the Sumy region, Ukraine, on March 9, 2025. Diego Fedele/Getty Images
“We’re not going to actually put out there, sort of what we talked about, because in any negotiation, there’s certainly an element where you don’t want one side to be giving away all the leverage from a public perspective,” Rubio said.
Instead of focusing on specific terms, Rubio said the discussions with the Ukrainians primarily focused on an overall plan for proceeding with negotiations with Moscow rather than specific terms of a final peace agreement.
“The bulk of our conversation was what a negotiation process would look like in terms of, not the specific conditions, but rather the timing of it, sort of the steps they would like to see taken,” he said.
Security Guarantees, Natural Resources
Zelenskyy has repeatedly positioned international security guarantees as a requisite component of a final peace deal. Among the security guarantees Zelenskyy has pitched is Ukrainian membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Putin has long opposed Kyiv’s membership in NATO and suggested he ordered the 2022 full-scale Russian assault on Ukraine to prevent such an outcome.
More recently, various European leaders have pitched the idea of deploying their forces inside Ukraine as peacekeepers tasked with enforcing a final peace agreement. The Trump administration has signaled openness to this peacekeeping concept, particularly if it’s done outside the scope of NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense provision. Still, Moscow remains skeptical of any third-party force inside Ukraine.
Rubio told reporters that a security guarantee for Ukraine could take other forms.
“We’re not going to go in with any sort of preconceived notion. The bottom line is, it needs to be something that makes Ukraine feel as though they can deter and prevent a future invasion,” he said. “How that looks and how that’s put together, that’s what we’re going to be talking about if we can get to that stage.”
(L-R) U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan, national security adviser Mosaad bin Mohammad al-Aiban, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Ukrainian head of Presidential Office Andriy Yermak, and Ukrainian Minister of Defense Rustem Umerovto attend a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on March 11, 2025. Salah Malkawi/Getty Images
Discussions over U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine have already proven to be a sticking point in talks between Trump and Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian leader visited Washington on Feb. 28, which the White House billed as a visit to finalize a deal for a U.S. partnership in Ukraine’s natural resource and infrastructure development. Still, those plans collapsed as Trump and Zelenskyy argued over security guarantees and Kyiv’s willingness to make concessions to reach a peace deal.
Trump presented the deal for Ukraine’s natural resources as an opportunity for the United States to recoup some of the costs it had borne in supporting Kyiv throughout the war. The U.S. president has also indicated such a partnership could incentivize additional rounds of U.S. support for Ukraine.
Addressing reporters on Wednesday, Rubio stopped short of saying a deal granting U.S. access to Ukraine’s natural resources would constitute a security guarantee like the kind Zelenskyy is seeking.
“I wouldn’t couch it as a security guarantee, but certainly, if the United States has a vested economic interest that’s generating revenue for our people as well as for the people of Ukraine, we’d have a vested interest in protecting it if it were to be challenged or threatened,” he said.
Following the Tuesday talks in Saudi Arabia, the United States and Ukraine said they would soon finalize a deal covering Ukraine’s natural resources but did not specify an exact timeline.
Reuters contributed to this report.
