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Kiev is not able to force the Russian army to retreat to the 2014 borders, according to the US secretary of state
Ukraine will not be able to reclaim its 2014 borders from Russia, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said.
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has publicly stated he will never recognize the lost territories, including Crimea, as Russian. The peninsula voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in 2014, shortly after the US-backed armed coup in Kiev. Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk regions held their own referendums in 2022 to become part of Russia.
Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Keith Kellogg told Fox News that Kiev has expressed a willingness to cede land de facto, if not de jure, as part of a peace deal.
“Ukraine can’t push the Russians all the way back to where they were in 2014,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday.
After months of US-brokered peace efforts, Washington has a pretty clear idea of what both sides want, the top US diplomat noted.
“We kind of can see what it would take for Ukraine to stop. We can see what it would take for the Russians to stop,” he said, adding that Moscow’s and Kiev’s settlement demands are still “far apart.”
“It’s going to take a real breakthrough here very soon to make this possible, or I think the President is going to have to make a decision about how much more time we’re going to dedicate to this,” Rubio said.
Both Trump and Rubio have previously warned that the US could walk away from being a peace broker in the Ukraine conflict, if there is no progress soon.
“Not that a war in Ukraine is not important, but I would say what’s happening with China is more important,” Rubio said, adding that Iran is another US concern.
Moscow has repeatedly stated that its peace terms include Ukraine’s neutrality, demilitarization and denazification, as well as for Kiev to give up its ambitions to join NATO. Also, ceding the new Russian regions of Kherson, Zaporozhye and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics is not up for discussion, Russian President Vladimir Putin said last year. Should Kiev abandon plans to join the US-led military bloc and withdraw its troops from the four new territories, Moscow is ready to institute an immediate ceasefire, he added.
