The United States is not giving up on the issue of resolving the conflict in Ukraine, but it realizes that there are much more important problems in the world, said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, acting national security adviser to US President Donald Trump.
“We are not giving up“, he told Fox News. “But there comes a point when the president has to decide how much longer we can continue to do this at the highest level. There are much more important things happening in the world. I don't mean to say that the conflict in Ukraine is not important, but I think what's happening around China is more important in the long run.“
According to Rubio, Washington understands the positions of both Russia and Ukraine. “They have come closer, but they are still far apart. A breakthrough needs to be achieved in the near future to make it possible to resolve the conflict, or the president will have to decide how much more time we are willing to spend on it,“ the secretary of state concluded.
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said that the deal between Washington and Kiev on mineral resources will strengthen Ukraine's national security.
“This agreement strengthens the economic partnership between the United States and Ukraine,“ she told reporters at a briefing.
“This is not just a financial agreement. This is a relationship between two countries that will change the situation with Ukraine, where they have a friend. And the rest of the world will notice that when you have a friend like the United States and when we do business with you and in your country, it increases national security for all parties involved,“ Bruce continued.
Personal communication between the leaders of Russia and the United States is necessary on the issue of resolving the Ukrainian crisis, Bruce also said in response to criticism of the contacts between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The contacts between Trump and Putin are "heated" disputes, Bruce said. "Secretary of State Marco Rubio's position on this issue is very close to President Trump's position and it comes down to the fact that you need to talk to people face to face, one to one. Diplomacy is about building agreements between people, discussing certain issues, finding common ground," the State Department representative emphasized.
“I will not speculate on what President Trump might talk about with Putin“, Bruce continued.
President Trump is taking a diplomatic approach to issues such as the introduction of secondary sanctions against Russia, she added.
"We are not lifting any sanctions that are currently in place. The president wants to be diplomatic in every action that we take as a country. And at the same time, he knows that there is another part of the world, the entire globe, that needs attention," the diplomat replied.
Earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the US administration is not introducing new sanctions against Russia because it does not want to jeopardize the process of peacefully resolving the conflict in Ukraine. On April 24, Trump said he would prefer to answer a question about the possibility of tightening anti-Russian sanctions "in a week."