Secretary of State Marco Rubio will not be attending peace talks with Ukrainian and European officials in London this week, the State Department announced, citing logistical issues.
“As we know, Secretary Rubio is a busy man,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on Tuesday.
“While the meetings in London are still occurring, he will not be attending, but that is not a statement regarding the meetings. It’s a statement about logistical issues in his schedule.”
The London talks come after Rubio and Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, met with European leaders in Paris last week about efforts to bring the fighting in Ukraine to an end.
Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general serving as Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, will be participating for the U.S. in the upcoming meetings.
The Russian news agency TASS reported on Tuesday, citing a Kremlin aide, that Witkoff plans to visit Moscow this week. Bruce said she could not confirm the reporting.
Trump, together with Rubio, “wants this to be solved diplomatically,” Bruce said of the war, now in its third year.
But Rubio suggested after the Paris meetings that the U.S. could “move on” from attempting to facilitate a Russia-Ukraine peace deal if there’s no progress on negotiations, even as the administration makes clear that Trump wants to end the violence.
“We are now reaching a point where we need to decide whether this is even possible or not,” Rubio told reporters Friday while departing from negotiations with his counterparts in Paris. “Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on.”
Vice President Vance, though, said Friday that he thinks things will move forward.
“The negotiations, I won’t pre-judge them, but we do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war to a close,” Vance told reporters during his visit to Rome.
Along the 2024 campaign trail, Trump promised to end the war overnight — but the president said last month that he had been “a little bit sarcastic” with that pledge. Russia invaded Ukraine back in February 2022.
Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko has said she signed a memorandum of intent with the U.S. ahead of a potential agreement to give the U.S. access to Kyiv’s natural resources, which would help U.S. interest in Ukraine’s security. Trump had been slated to sign a deal during a visit from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this year, but called it off after a contentious Oval Office meeting.