United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for a second time in two days on Friday, with the war in Ukraine the focal point of their huddle. They had met for 50 minutes on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Malaysia on Thursday.While campaigning for re-election, US President Donald Trump had promised to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office.
But more than four months later, the prospects of a ceasefire appear as remote as ever, with Russia launching a fierce bombardment of Ukraine in recent days.
After the Thursday meeting, Rubio told reporters that Trump was “disappointed and frustrated that there’s not been more flexibility on the Russian side” to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.
So has Trump’s view of the war changed – and what are his next options?
Has Trump’s position on Russia shifted?
Rubio’s comments come at a time when Trump has increasingly been publicly critical of Putin, after previously accusing Ukraine of not wanting peace.
“We get a lot of b******t thrown at us by Putin. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” Trump said on Tuesday.
Since February, the US has held separate talks with Russia and Ukraine, and brokered direct talks between them in May in Istanbul for the first time since the early months of Russia’s full-fledged invasion in 2022.
But while Putin has offered brief pauses in fighting, he has not accepted the US proposal for an unc …
