WASHINGTON: Top officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration on Sunday (Apr 27) pressed Russia and Ukraine to make headway on a peace deal following a one-on-one meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Vatican a day earlier.
“It needs to happen soon,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’ “We cannot continue to dedicate time and resources to this effort if it’s not going to come to fruition.”
Rubio said the US would consider in the coming week whether to continue mediating talks “or if it’s time to sort of focus on some other issues.”
Trump and Zelenskyy, in Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis, met in a Vatican basilica on Saturday to try to revive faltering efforts to end Russia’s war with Ukraine. The meeting was the first between the two leaders since an angry encounter in the Oval Office in Washington in February and comes at a critical time in negotiations aimed at bringing an end to the conflict.
In a Truth Social post later on Saturday, Trump rebuked Russian President Vladimir Putin over recent attacks on Ukraine, saying “there was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days.”
In a pre-taped interview that aired on CBS News’ ‘Face the Nation’ on Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would continue to target sites used by Ukraine’s military.
When asked about a Russian strike on Kyiv last week that killed civilians, Lavrov said “the target attacked was not something absolutely civilian” and that Russia only targets “sites which are used by the military.”
Zelenskyy wrote on the messaging app Telegram that his top military commander had reported that Russia had already conducted nearly 70 attacks on Sunday.
