Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Trump-Putin summit
(CBS, KYMA/KECY) - Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday following the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska.
The pair discussed what their meeting mean for the war between Russia and Ukraine and what are the next steps for diplomacy.
According to Brennan, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not give U.S. President Donald Trump "the ceasefire he sought," but Putin says "the root causes of the conflict have to be resolved in a peace agreement," prompting her to ask Secretary Rubio if the root cause is Russia invading Ukraine, to which Rubio said:
"Ultimately, yeah. But I mean, what he means by root causes is this long historical complaints that we've heard repeatedly. This is not a new argument, he's been making this for a long time, and it's the argument that it's Western encroachment. I don't want to get into...it's just so long. But the bottom line is that all of...you know, we're not going to focus on all of that stuff. We're going to focus on this: Are they going to stop fighting or not? And what it's going to take to stop the fighting. And what it's going to take to stop the fighting, if we're being honest and serious here, is both sides are going to have to give, and both sides should expect to get something from this. And that's a very difficult thing to do. It's very difficult because Ukraine obviously feels, you know, harmed, and rightfully so, because they were invaded. And the Russian side, because they feel like they got momentum in the battlefield, and frankly, don't care, don't seem to care very much about how many Russian soldiers die in this endeavor. They just churn through it. So I think what the President deserves a lot of credit for is the amount of time and energy that his administration is placing on reaching a peace agreement for a war that's not a war that started under him. It's half, you know, it's on the other side of the world. That said, I mean, it's relevant to us. But there are a lot of other issues he could be focused on. So tomorrow, we'll be meeting with President Zelenskyy. We'll be meeting with European leaders. We just met with Putin. He's dedicated a lot of time and energy because he has made it a priority of his administration to stop or end war- stop wars or prevent them. And right now, this is the biggest war going on in the world. It's the biggest war in Europe since World War Two. We're going to continue to do everything we can to reach an agreement that ends the dying and the killing and the suffering that's going on right now."
Brennan followed up by asking Rubio if Putin indicated he is willing to make a single concession, and Rubio said:
"I think there are a couple. I mean, there were...not enough for Ukraine, if not we would be announcing a peace deal this morning, right? But certainly, there are some things we notice changes. There are some changes that I think are possible. I think there's some concepts that were discussed that could potentially lead to something. But again, all these things have to be verifiable. We...it isn't real until it's real. I mean...one thing is what you say you might be willing to consider, another thing is your willingness to do it. And it always becomes a trade off in all of this. But you talk about the intensifying strikes on the Russian side, yeah, I mean, they're a full-time war machine. I mean, that's what's happening. The Russian economy has basically been turned into a full-time wartime economy. They have a lot of people. It's a big country. It's not just large geographically. It has huge populations. It continues to churn through people. You know, they lost...20,000 Russian soldiers were killed last month, in July, in this war. That just tells you the price they're willing to pay. Not saying any of this is admirable, I'm saying that this is the reality of the war that we're facing. It's become attrition, in some ways. It's a meat grinder, and they just have more meat to grind."
During the interview, Brennan and Rubio talked about NATO and European leaders joining Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House Monday.
The remarkable move, with one European leader after another announcing they'll be at Zelenskyy's side when he travels to the White House on Monday, was an apparent effort to ensure that the meeting goes better than the last one in February, when Trump berated the Ukrainian president in a heated Oval Office encounter.
This led Brennan to ask Rubio if the European leaders are coming to the White House out of concern that Zelenskyy is "to be bullied into signing something away," and Rubio said:
"They're not coming here tomorrow to keep Zelenskyy from being bullied...The President's talked to these leaders as early as Thursday...We've been working with these people for weeks on this stuff. They're coming here tomorrow because they chose to come here tomorrow. We invited them to come. We invited them to come. The President invited them to come."
To watch more of Brennan's interview with Rubio, click here.
