Putin moves goalposts – and Washington continues to reactpublished at 18:55 British Summer Time
18:55 BST
Tom Bateman
US State Department correspondent, reporting from Antalya
I just asked US Secretary of State Marco Rubio whether the US is
putting the pressure of a deadline on Putin to make him do what Trump wants.
At his press conference here in
Antalya, Rubio basically dodged my question – instead of talking timelines, he
called for a Trump-Putin summit as the only way to make progress.
This is the
Americans’ latest demand of Putin, replacing the possibility of Putin-Zelensky
summit this week (which the Ukrainian president proposed and Putin ignored).
“The president’s willing to stick
with this as long as it takes to achieve peace. What we cannot do, however, is
continue to fly all over the world and engage in meetings that are not going to
be productive again,” said Rubio.
He added that the only way now for a
“breakthrough” was by Trump “sitting face-to-face with President Putin and
determining once and for all whether there’s a path to peace” (watch part of that moment below).
Rubio says no “high expectations” for peace talks
This is yet another shift in the US position.
The administration has gone from first demanding an immediate month-long truce, to conceding to Moscow’s far more limited ceasefire proposal (which never materialised), to last weekend deflating a European ultimatum for Putin to agree to a 30-day truce by the start of this week.
And then finally, backing Putin’s proposal instead for Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul today – which so far have not happened.
Each call by the Americans for Putin to deliver has ended in him successfully moving the goalposts. Washington is once again setting no deadline on the latest shifting objectives.