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President Donald Trump’s prowess as a negotiator will help determine if Russian President Vladimir Putin is serious about negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday.
Rubio appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” where host Margaret Brennan asked if he could trust that potential negotiations with Russia would be forthright considering how Putin “likes to use diplomacy as a cover to distract while he continues to wage war.”
“I don’t think in geopolitics anyone should trust anyone,” Rubio responded. “I think these things have to be verified through actions. I said yesterday that peace is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s an action. You have to take concrete steps towards it.”
Rubio added that there is “no better negotiator in American politics” than Trump, saying that the president “will know very quickly whether this is a real thing or whether this is an effort to buy time.”
HOW SAUDI ARABIA’S CROWN PRINCE BECAME A CENTRAL PLAYER IN US-BROKERED PEACE TALKS BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday said that he believes Trump is America’s best political negotiator. (MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/Pool AP/AFP via Getty Images, File)
“But I don’t want to prejudge that,” Rubio said. “I don’t want to foreclose the opportunity to end the conflict that’s already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands and continues every single day to be increasingly a war of attrition on both sides.”
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago. The fighting has produced heavy casualties on both sides, becoming Europe’s largest military conflict since World War II.
Trump had repeatedly said while on the campaign trail that if he was president in 2022, the war would not have broken out — vowing to end it if re-elected.
RUSSIA CLAIMS TRUMP, PUTIN TALK BROUGHT WORLD FROM ‘BRINK OF APOCALYPSE,’ EU WARNS OF ‘DIRTY TRICKS’
Trump spoke to Putin in a phone call on Wednesday, telling reporters that he and Putin…
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