Marco Rubio questioned over past comments on Vladimir Putin

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was confronted with a video from his past as President Donald Trump tries to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.

NBC’s Kristen Welker played a clip on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” of Rubio criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Rubio suggested in the clip that the U.S. should not “cut a deal” with Putin, saying that he was a “liar.”

“This guy lies, habitually lies. He’s never kept a deal they’ve ever signed. And he lies all the time. And I don’t know why, but he plays us like a violin in the West. Because the West wants to believe that you can cut a deal with everybody. You can’t cut a deal with guys like this. He’s a professional experienced liar,” Rubio said in the 2022 video clip.

Welker then asked Rubio whether he believed Putin would stick to an agreement struck with the U.S. He said that any deal would need to have “enforceable mechanisms” within it.

“That’s why the deal has to have things like security guarantees. That’s the point I was making a few minutes ago when you were asking me about looking someone in the eye. What’s important here is action, not words, not paper document. Those are all important. Those are elements of a deal. But they have to be enforceable. They have to be verifiable. They have to be enduring,” Rubio said.

“There’s no point here in signing a deal that’s going to be violated in three or four months. There’s no point in doing that. It actually would make things worse. So that’s why this is such a difficult thing. Not only do you need a deal, you need a deal that’s verifiable, that’s enforceable, and that’s enduring,” he continued.

“If you don’t achieve that, then I think you could have a ceasefire for a few months, a few weeks. And then the war will start again and more people will die. That’s not the outcome we’re interested in. That’s not the outcome anyone wants. So that’s why this is so difficult,” he added.

Rubio’s comments come just days after Trump welcomed Putin to the U.S. for a meeting to end the war in Ukraine. However, Trump failed to reach a deal with the Russian leader and is now set to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday.

Trump, who for years has balked at American support for Ukraine and expressed admiration for Putin, had pledged confidently to bring about an end to the war on his first day back in the White House. Seven months later, after berating Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and stanching the flow of some U.S. military assistance to Kyiv, Trump could not bring Putin even to pause the fighting, as his forces make gains on the battlefield.

The U.S. president had offered Putin both a carrot and a stick, issuing threats of punishing economic sanctions on Russia while also extending a warm welcome at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, but he appeared to walk away without any concrete progress on ending the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.

Instead, he handed Putin long-sought recognition on the international stage, after years of Western efforts to make him a pariah over the war and his crackdown on dissent, and forestalled the threat of additional U.S. sanctions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.