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President Trump lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on social media today after Kyiv rejected U.S. terms to end the war with Russia. Quote, "he can have peace, or he can fight for another three years before losing the whole country," Trump wrote. Meanwhile, Ukraine peace talks scheduled for today in London were downgraded after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio pulled out at the last minute. NPR's Willem Marx reports that American patience with both Ukraine and Europe appears to be running short.
WILLEM MARX, BYLINE: Marco Rubio had said he'd held a productive call Tuesday night with his British counterpart, David Lammy, who'd planned to host meetings this morning in London with Rubio and fellow foreign ministers from France, Germany and Ukraine. But Rubio's no-show meant Lammy only met his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha, alongside the U.K. and Ukraine's defense ministers. They all said they were working for peace that Ukraine's foreign minister called fair and lasting, as well as ways to achieve, as Ukraine's Defense Minister Rustem Umerov put it, a complete and unconditional ceasefire.
And they were still doing this, according to the head of President Zelenskyy's office on social media, despite everything. That everything may now include not just the nightly Russian missiles still raining down on Ukraine's cities but the action - or inaction - of the United States, too. Last week, in a previous round of talks in Paris, Marco Rubio threatened that without major progress, the U.S. might pull back from the peace process within a matter of days.
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MARCO RUBIO: So if they're serious about peace, either side or both, we want to help. If it's not going to happen, then we're just going to move on.
MARX: And alongside President Trump's comments today, he previously reiterated Rubio's willingness to walk away.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we're just going to say you're foolish, you're fools, you're horrible people, and we're going to just take a pass.
IAN LESSER: This is not necessarily an administration that is committed to patient, long-term diplomacy.
MARX: Ian Lesser is a distinguished senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States who previously worked at the U.S. State Department.
LESSER: I think they have other things they would rather focus on, and if there aren't really prospects of success, I imagine the attention span may be short.
MARX: One potential proposal members of the Trump administration have floated recently would force Ukraine to accept that land Russia seized, like Crimea in 2014 or areas of eastern Ukraine more recently, would in future become permanent parts of Russia. Ukraine's repeatedly rejected this possibility, and the U.S. may lack the necessary leverage to conclude the conflict with this approach, says James Nixey, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at think tank Chatham House.
JAMES NIXEY: The Ukrainians won't go for it. The Ukrainians have agency. This is obviously a deal that works for the Americans 'cause, quite honestly, any deal will work for the Americans. The Americans are just desperate for a deal, and a bad deal is better than no deal. But that's the opposite for the Ukrainians. For Ukrainians, no deal is better than a bad deal.
MARX: Nonetheless, it leaves Europe's leaders in a challenging position, says Neil Melvin, the director of international security at the Royal United Services Institute.
NEIL MELVIN: The terms that the Trump administration is pushing to settle this conflict run completely counter to European interests, to the basis on which the war has been fought and that United States has previously provided assistance. And it looks, I think particularly from a European perspective, as though the United States is now siding more with the aggressor in the war than the victim.
MARX: Melvin says the fact Rubio skipped out on London and Witkoff went to Moscow suggests there's no deal to be reached right now, and that may suit Russia if it eventually means the United States walks away. In the meantime, amid all this diplomatic scrambling, the active conflict continues across Ukraine.
For NPR News, I'm Willem Marx in London.
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