Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that Russia is running out of time to convince the Trump administration that it is serious about striking a peace deal with Ukraine and not just playing for time.
Speaking in Brussels after a two-day gathering of NATO ministers, Mr. Rubio said that the United States was losing patience with “talks about talks” and hinted that Russia was in danger of facing more American sanctions.
“We will know soon enough, in a matter of weeks, not months, whether Russia is serious about peace or not,” he told reporters. Members of Congress, he added, are already crafting new sanctions measures that administration officials are “not going to be able to stop” without signs of progress.
President Trump has vowed to end the war in Ukraine and is mediating talks between Moscow and Kyiv. Many observers had assumed that Russia would embrace such a deal and Ukraine would resist it, given that Russia occupies about one-fifth of its neighbor and has suffered staggering casualties.
But Mr. Rubio’s remarks were the latest sign that the Trump administration is coming around to a view long held by the Biden administration, and by Mr. Rubio himself when he was a Florida senator: that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia does not bargain in good faith.
Many analysts say the Russian leader is stalling for time to press his military and political advantage.
Mr. Rubio spoke after a NATO gathering whose collegial photo-ops and press statements masked deep tensions between America and Europe over Ukraine, Mr. Trump’s market-rocking tariffs and even the fate of Greenland.
Mr. Rubio also conveyed Mr. Trump’s expectation that NATO members dramatically increase spending on their militaries to 5 percent of their gross domestic product — a tough pill for Europe to swallow as Mr. Trump’s tariffs threaten its economy.
In remarks to reporters, Mr. Rubio defended Mr. Trump’s tariffs as necessary, but soft-pedaled the timeline for increased military spending as “a path of getting up to 5 percent at some point.” He said that other NATO members were “open to doing more” to make the alliance stronger and less reliant on the United States.
A senior State Department official acknowledged that the tariffs had come up when Mr. Rubio met with his fellow ministers to discuss Ukraine. But the official, speaking on background to discuss private diplomacy, insisted that the mood in the room had been collegial.
There were reasons to believe that U.S. officials hoped to smooth over the obvious tensions during the event, however.
After Mr. Rubio met on Thursday with Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, a bland State Department summary characterized the meeting as a “reaffirmation” of the U.S.-Denmark relationship. It made no mention of Greenland, the semiautonomous Danish territory that Mr. Trump has vowed to control by any means necessary.
But Mr. Rasmussen said in a pointed social media post that he had “made it crystal clear” to Mr. Rubio “that claims and statements about annexing Greenland are not only unacceptable and disrespectful. They amount to a violation of international law.”
In response on Friday, Mr. Rubio suggested that the United States would not need to seize Greenland because the island’s people, he said, already want to leave Denmark. “We didn’t give them that idea,” he said. “They’ve been talking about that for a long time.”
While it is true that Greenland has been on a path toward full independence, there is little sign that it hopes to become an American property.
Despite Mr. Trump’s talk that a peace deal in Ukraine could unlock a new U.S.-Russia relationship, the Kremlin has agreed only to very partial cease-fire terms, including a mutual pause on attacks against energy infrastructure sites which neither side has observed.
Still, European governments worry that Mr. Trump — an admirer of Mr. Putin and frequent critic of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky — may prioritize Russia’s interests in any peace agreement, and they are pressing their own efforts to protect Ukraine.
On Friday, French and British military leaders visited Kyiv to discuss a potential troop deployment to secure any cease-fire, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, told journalists in Brussels.
The discussions in Ukraine’s General Staff headquarters had been expected to focus on technical issues for such a peacekeeping force, Col. Pavlo Palisa, Mr. Zelensky’s top military adviser, told journalists earlier in the week. Such a deployment would serve both as a deterrent and guarantee the presence of allied military equipment such as air defenses, he added.
The Kremlin says it will not tolerate troops from NATO member nations in Ukraine.
In Brussels, Mr. Rubio also denied that the Trump administration’s shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development had prevented American disaster relief from quickly reaching Myanmar after the devastating earthquake there last week.
Mr. Rubio blamed the delay on Myanmar’s junta, without citing evidence, and said that other wealthy nations, including China and India, should contribute more. “We are the richest country in the world, but our resources are not unlimited,” he said.
Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.