United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Washington expects Moscow to present broad terms for a potential cease-fire in Ukraine within days, following recent high-level contacts between the two sides.

“What we’re expecting now, based on the president’s phone conversation yesterday and my conversations over the weekend with Mr. (Sergey) Lavrov, is that at some point here, fairly soon—maybe in a number of days, maybe this week hopefully—the Russian side is going to present terms that they would want to see, just broad terms that would allow us to move towards a cease-fire,” Rubio told lawmakers during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on the State Department’s 2026 budget request.

Rubio said the nature of Russia’s proposal would signal its actual intent.

“We are hoping that will happen. We believe that the term sheet that the Russians produce will tell us a lot about their true intentions,” he said. “If it’s a term sheet that’s realistic and you can work off of it, that’s one thing. If it makes demands that we know are unrealistic, I think that will be indicative.”

Next steps would rest with Trump

The next steps, he added, would rest with U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I can’t speak for him at this moment. I’m not prepared to say, but I think we all know he is aware of both his authorities to sanction and he is well aware of the fact that this bill (to impose sanctions against Russia) was moving in the Senate.”

Rubio also discussed his recent trip to Türkiye, where he and Senator Lindsey Graham joined an informal NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Antalya and took part in Ukraine- diplomacy in Istanbul.

“It’s one of the reasons why I asked Senator Graham to join me in Türkiye, to engage—when we arrived that night—with our Ukrainian partners as well,” Rubio said, referring to a meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.

May 21, 2025 01:47 AM GMT+03:00