Secretary of State Marco Rubio with Larry Kudlow of Fox Business Network

QUESTION:  All right, it gives us great pleasure – joining us, Secretary of State Marco Rubio.  Mr. Secretary, a warm welcome.  Thank you for coming on.  We appreciate it.  And lots going on today.  The meetings with Russia.  Let me start – Mr. Trump on Truth Social:  “My Special Envoy, Steve Witkoff… highly productive meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Great progress was made!”  The New York Times and other outlets are suggesting a meeting, but it isn’t clear whether there’s a meeting with President Trump and Putin or whether Zelenskyy is part of the meeting.

Let’s begin there.  What can you tell us, Mr. Secretary?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, Steve went over to Moscow yesterday – Steve Witkoff, Ambassador Witkoff – and had a productive meeting in terms of what was discussed.  The details, perhaps, hadn’t been shared before in terms of some ideas of how to bring this war to an end.  Let’s remind everybody that’s the goal here.  The President wants to end the war.  So it was productive in that sense.  We now have to continue to make progress.

The President, after getting that update today, convened several leaders from Europe, updated them on the – what happened in the talks.  We’re going to be having talks with our European allies and the Ukrainians as well over the next couple of days just to see what we – what progress we can make on that side of it.  And then hopefully, if things continue to progress, an opportunity will present itself very soon for the President to meet both with Vladimir Putin and with President Zelenskyy at some point here, hopefully in the near future – but obviously a lot has to happen before that can occur.

But I’ve always believed – I’ve always said this – that I don’t think – I think for the deal – if there’s going to be a deal to end this war, it will have to require the President to come in at the end and close on it, as I’ve seen him do numerous times now on trade deals as an example.  So we’ve got to get close enough to that point so that a meeting like that will be productive and worth doing.  Today was a good day but we got a lot of work ahead.  There’s still many impediments to overcome, and we hope to do that over the next few days and hours – weeks maybe.

QUESTION:  Secretary, when Putin talks about ending the war, what did – help me out.  What does that mean, ending the war?  Is that a ceasefire, which has been called for and he never delivered on that?  A troop withdrawal?  Is there a peace deal at hand?  I don’t want to get ahead of the story, but I often ask what – what does ending the war mean to Vladimir Putin?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.  Well, without getting into the details of what was discussed, because I don’t want to imperil the progress that was made today and I don’t want to exaggerate it either, but I think we all understand a couple things.  At some point a ceasefire has to be a part of this process because it is hard to negotiate details of a final peace agreement while you’re shooting at each other.  So I think you have to make enough progress with enough of an outline of how the war’s going to end that then, ideally, puts you into a ceasefire position for a short period of time and you use that time to finalize an end to the war.  But I do think you’ve got to come a long way in understanding how you end the war.

The second point that you raise is I think the key elements of any end to the war are going to be territorial.  There are areas that Russia has taken that they currently control, and that includes Crimea that goes back all the way to 2014, and some other areas they’ve made some advances, so that.  And then there are – so obviously there are – anytime you’re going to make a deal there’s going have to be concessions; there’s going to have to be concessions by the Russians and concessions by the Ukrainians, of course, as well.  So that’s tough.

This is tough.  When you have a war and people have died – for example, on the Ukrainian side they’ve paid an enormous price in this war.  So have the Russians, but the Ukrainians have paid a big price in this war.  Those concessions aren’t easy.  You have to also sell them to the public back in your country.  But I think what I can say is everybody wants the war to end.  I think the conditions under which it’s supposed to end is – that’s always the hard part in this. 

But today was a good day but there’s a lot of work to – I don’t want to exaggerate.  We still have a ways to go here but we certainly are closer today then we were yesterday, where we weren’t close at all.

QUESTION:  Is Ambassador Witkoff, Steve Witkoff, coming back with a ceasefire proposal?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yes.

QUESTION:  Is that a ceasefire on Thursday, a ceasefire on Friday, a ceasefire on Monday?  Is that in the cards?  Was that discussed at this meeting?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, I don’t know about timing in terms of that.  That’s – the specific timing of it is not discussed.  I think what we have is a better understanding of the conditions under which Russia would be prepared to end the war.  We now have to compare that to what the Ukrainians and our European allies, but the Ukrainians primarily, of course, are willing to accept.  And what you try to see is how far can you get these two positions closer?  How can you get these two positions closer to each other? 

If we can get what the Ukrainians will accept and what the Russians will accept close enough, then I think there’s the opportunity for the President to have a meeting that includes both Putin and Zelenskyy to try to close this thing out.  So we’ve got to get closer in that regard.  But I think for the first time, perhaps since this administration began, we have some concrete examples of the kinds of things that Russia would ask for in order to end the war.  We haven’t had much of that to this point.  Obviously the Ukrainians have a say in this.  We got to – we got to bring the two sides and the two positions close enough so that the ultimate closer, President Trump, can get involved and make it happen.

QUESTION:  Will President Trump and yourself, for that matter, will you still impose the secondary sanctions on Russia Friday?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, that’s a decision the President will need to make here over the next 24 to 36 hours.  A lot of it’ll depend on how talks – the works we’re going to be doing over the next couple of days, progress.  And then, ultimately, it’ll be the President’s call in terms of whether he still thinks sanctions need to go in place or not in place pending this thing being moved forward on. 

So I don’t want to prejudge that.  I don’t think we’re at a stage yet where the President has to make that decision.  He’ll have to make that decision by Friday.  But we’re going to be doing a lot of work today and tomorrow to see how close we can bring the two sides, and then present that to the President and let him make a decision.

QUESTION:  Do you expect President Trump to be on the phone with Putin in the next how many hours?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Maybe.  None is scheduled at this time.  It could happen over the next couple of days.  It could happen, but none is scheduled at this time.  But I do think that the talks that Ambassador Witkoff had with Putin and his team over the last few hours is good because we now have a sense at least of what it is they would require.  Now, it may not be what Ukraine can accept, but at least it gives us an outline to work off of, and now we’ve got to see how much we can move the two sides towards each other.

So, but there’s no call scheduled right now, and I imagine – I think what all sides would like to see is if we can make enough progress, we’ll have a meeting, and I think it’ll take that kind of meeting to bring this thing to an end. 

QUESTION:  And you think, Secretary, that a meeting, quote/unquote, either a meeting with Putin or a meeting with the three of them, would occur next week?  Are you optimistic about that?  Yourself included, I suppose.  I don’t want to shortchange our Secretary of State.  But do you think a meeting will come next week? 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  (Laughter.)  I don’t know if it’ll be next week or not.  It remains to be seen.  I think it’ll depend a lot on how much progress we can make.  I don’t – again, this is important in the sense that we think what happened was good because we have a sense now of what conditions the Russians would require in order to end the war.  Now, they may not be the conditions Ukraine can accept or, frankly, that others would accept.  But at least we have something to work off of.

So I think a lot of that is going to depend now on how close can we bring the two sides to each other – can we make enough progress, can we get 85 percent of the way there, 75 percent of the way there.  Because I don’t think you can have a leaders-level meeting if you’re not close enough, because then nothing is going to come of that meeting.  So we want to get it close enough, and then we’ve got – we want to give the President the opportunity to come in and close it.  So I can’t prejudge how long that could take.  It could take hours, it could take days – frankly, it could take weeks.  We don’t know.  But we’re going to try here.  We’re working on it even as we speak.

QUESTION:  One last one, Mr. Secretary, before I lose you.  And we appreciate your time so much.  Lots of talk coming out of the Middle East.  The Government of Israel might engage in a military takeover of all of Gaza, the remaining parts of Gaza they don’t already control.  Have you spoken to the prime minister, and do you think that is a wise decision for Israel to take over Gaza altogether?

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, ultimately the President has said that it’s up to Israel to decide what they need to do for their own security.  I’ve spoken often – almost daily – to somebody in the Israeli Government, often to the prime minister but many times to many members of his team.  Here’s what I would say.  There are three problems going on there, and they’re all interrelated. 

The first is there is a humanitarian problem that needs to be addressed.  We’re working very hard to figure out ways to address it in ways that doesn’t benefit Hamas but that allows people to be fed and prevents a further humanitarian problem there that we’re seeing now. 

The second is that there are 20 innocent human beings that are being held hostage in horrifying conditions.

And the third is that as long as Hamas exists, there will not be peace.  There cannot be a permanent peace.  It’ll restart again if Hamas remains. 

There’s a lot of attention being paid to the humanitarian, and we want to do everything we can to be helpful on the humanitarian problem, but not enough attention being paid to the fact that 20 people that had nothing to do with this are being held hostage in tunnels on the verge of death, and no real talk about how Hamas needs to be disarmed and disbanded.  We have to focus more on those two things.  You have to do all three, and all the talk is about humanitarian – which is important; we are willing to do a lot to be helpful there – but we have to focus on the other two.  Those other two cannot be forgotten.  And it’s all – the President has said he wants all the hostages out – not five, not seven, all of them, including the deceased hostages.  And ultimately, Hamas cannot continue to exist.  Even the Arab League says it.  As long as Hamas exists as an armed group in Gaza, there will not be a peace – there will not be a peaceful future, because it’s going to happen again.  And that can’t – this can never happen again. 

QUESTION:  All right.  Secretary of State Marco Rubio, we appreciate what you’ve told us and we appreciate your coming onto the show very much. 

SECRETARY RUBIO:  Thank you.

QUESTION:  Take care, sir.  God bless.