Rubio suggests Ukraine won't return to pre-2014 borders

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Monday that Ukraine was unlikely to win back all of the territory captured by Russia since 2014, as U.S. and Ukrainian officials are set to meet for talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

Rubio said that Russia and Ukraine would both have to do "difficult things" to end the conflict.

“The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things, like the Russians are going to have to do difficult things to end this conflict, or at least pause it in some way, shape or form,” he told reporters, according to the New York Times.

The secretary said both countries need to understand that there is no military solution to the conflict. “The Russians can’t conquer all of Ukraine, and obviously it’ll be very difficult for Ukraine in any reasonable time period to sort of force the Russians back all the way to where they were in 2014," he added.

Rubio said it's currently unclear how far apart Russia and Ukraine are on potential terms of a ceasefire.

Rubio was part of the U.S. delegation for talks with Russian officials on Feb. 18 in Saudi Arabia. The same delegation — including President Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz — is scheduled to sit down Tuesday with a Ukrainian delegation led by Andrii Yermak, the top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Trump has been criticized for apparently ceding to key Russian demands at the outset of peace talks, with Rubio's comments as the latest example.

Last month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in opening remarks before the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, said that Ukraine will not get all its territory back from Russia, and also should not expect to join NATO, a longtime Kyiv demand.

The Trump administration has been vague about how much land Ukraine should be willing to give up, and whether it will support Russia's claim to four regions in eastern Ukraine, parts of which have been occupied since its invasion in 2022.

Trump too has said it's not "practical” to have Ukraine join NATO — a security guarantee that would help ensure that the Kremlin doesn’t renew its attacks on Ukraine in the future.

The talks this week in Jeddah come less than two weeks after Trump's confrontational Oval Office meeting with Zelensky.

In the days since, Trump has suspended U.S. military aid to Ukraine, halted intelligence support for strikes on Russia, and talked about potentially deporting tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees who fled from the war. 

Zelensky has signaled his openness to signing a mineral rights deal with the U.S., but it's unclear if Trump can extract concessions from Ukraine that will be acceptable to Russian President Vladimir Putin in broader peace talks.