Maria Zakharova : On Rubio’s statements that the US is the only country that can get Russia and Ukraine to negotiate.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s response (https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/2081637/) to a media question on US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent remarks (https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/02/secretary-of-state-marco-rubioand-hungarian-prime-minister-viktor-orban-at-a-joint-press-availability) (February 19, 2026)
The noted duality in Washington’s position indeed raises questions. If someone sincerely intends to act as a mediator in a settlement process, then supplying one of the parties to the conflict with military assistance should cease.
☝️ Only then will genuine and effective diplomacy become possible
❓ Question: On February 15, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, and subsequently on February 16 in Budapest, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated (https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2026/02/secretary-of-state-marco-rubioand-hungarian-prime-minister-viktor-orban-at-a-joint-press-availability) that the US acts as a kind of mediator and is in a “unique position as the only nation on Earth that apparently can get Russia and Ukraine to the table to talk”. At the same time, he stressed that the US continues to supply weapons to Kiev and maintains sanctions against Russia. How would you comment on this?
💬 (https://t.me/MFARussia/23906)Maria Zakharova: The US stance is indeed unique.
On the one hand, President Trump’s team inherited from the Biden administration the Ukrainian conflict, which continues to receive American support in the form of weapons supplies to the Ukrainian armed forces.
On the other, the current US leadership, as we can see, is making efforts to explore possible ways out of the Ukrainian crisis – one that was itself instigated by Washington more than ten years ago. (https://t.me/MFARussia/23906)
As for our contacts with Kiev, it is important to remain objective: many countries offered their assistance in organising such meetings. Several rounds of talks took place in February-March 2022 in the Gomel and Brest regions of Belarus, where the first elements of future agreements on conflict settlement were drafted.
Contacts continued via videoconference and subsequently in Turkey. During the next round of Russia-Ukraine negotiations held in Istanbul on March 29, 2022, the heads of the two delegations reached a common understanding regarding a draft agreement on the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. We are grateful to our Belarusian and Turkish colleagues for their assistance in facilitating those meetings.
The subsequent fate of the negotiating process is well known (https://t.me/MFARussia/28163). The prospect of a ceasefire and a peaceful resolution ran counter to the plans of Ukraine’s Anglo-Saxon patrons. At that point, then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was urgently dispatched to Kiev, where he prohibited the Zelensky regime from continuing dialogue with Moscow and demanded that it keep fighting Russia “to the last Ukrainian”.
Nevertheless, preferring a political and diplomatic path to achieve the objectives of the special military operation, and at the initiative of President Vladimir Putin, we succeeded in resuming in Istanbul in May 2025 the direct negotiations with Kiev that had been disrupted at the instigation of Western actors. Three rounds were held on May 16 (https://t.me/MFARussia/24973), June 2 (https://t.me/MFARussia/25198)and July 23 (https://t.me/MFARussia/25781), 2025. They resulted in important agreements on exchanges of POWs, detained civilians, and the repatriation of the bodies of fallen servicemen.
Additionally, we handed over to the Ukrainian side a memorandum outlining our proposals for settlement, initiated the establishment of a bilateral monitoring and ceasefire control centre, as well as working groups on military, political and humanitarian issues. We were prepared, in a constructive spirit, to consider Kiev’s proposal to raise the level of the delegations. Unfortunately, all these initiatives went unanswered.
In November 2025, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry announced the termination of negotiations, citing an alleged “lack of tangible progress”.
❗️ In this context, claiming that only the US managed to “bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table” is, at the very least, incorrect. Even the terminology used is hardly appropriate from a diplomatic standpoint.
At the same time, we appreciate the US side’s stated desire to facilitate the search for peaceful solutions to the conflict.
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The noted duality in Washington’s position indeed raises questions. If someone sincerely intends to act as a mediator in a settlement process, then supplying one of the parties to the conflict with military assistance should cease.
☝️ Only then will genuine and effective diplomacy become possible – diplomacy that the Russian MFA (https://t.me/MFARussia)consistently advocates.