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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could meet next week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City.
The meeting comes as NATO is seeing increasing pressure to more aggressively counter Russia by enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine as Poland looks to prevent more Russian drones from entering its airspace.
“President Trump [has had] multiple calls with Putin, multiple meetings with Zelenskyy, including probably next week again in New York,” Rubio told reporters from Israel moments before he departed for Qatar. “He’s trying to do everything possible to bring [the war] to an end.”
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“We’ve been working closely with our partners in Europe on security guarantees, because that’s going to be necessary in any negotiated settlement,” he added. “And he’s going to keep trying. If peace is possible, he wants to achieve it.”
Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, on Monday called on NATO allies to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine to better protect not only Ukrainians from Russia’s constant aerial bombardments, but neighboring NATO allies that share borders with the war-torn nation.
“We as NATO and the EU could be capable of doing this, but it is not a decision that Poland can make alone,” Sikorski told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine. “It can only be made with its allies.”
The move is unlikely to be approved by NATO, which has previously refused to enforce a no-fly zone after the U.S., under President Joe Biden, turned down the request first made by Zelenskyy in 2022.
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“If Ukraine were to ask us to shoot them down over its territory, that would be advantageous for us. If you ask me personally, we should consider it,” Sikorski said.
Russian officials have already made clear they would view NATO strikes against Russian drones and missiles in aid of Ukraine as direct involvement in the war.
“The implementation of the provocative idea of Kyiv and other idiots about creating a ‘no-fly zone over Ukraine’ and the ability for NATO countries to shoot down our UAVs will mean only one thing – a war between NATO and Russia,” Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said in a Telegram post on Monday.
Trump has seen increasing pressure at home and from Western allies, including Ukraine, to take a tougher stance when it comes to countering Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has threatened on numerous occasions to hit Moscow with sanctions, though he has yet to employ the financial tool since re-entering office despite a series of deadlines he issued on Putin having come and gone.
Rubio said Trump may conclude at some point that a peace deal with Putin is not possible, but told reporters on Tuesday that “he’s not there yet.”
“The only leader in the world that can talk to both the Ukrainians, Europeans, and also to the Russians is President Trump,” Rubio said. “He’s not going to easily forfeit that role.
“If somehow he were to disengage from this, or you know, sanction Russia and say ‘I’m done,’ then there’s no one left in the world that could possibly mediate the end,” Rubio added. “Now maybe we get to that point – we hope not, because it’s a really bad war and he wants it to end.”
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