It seems like US President Donald Trump will buck Europe’s demand to impose more sanctions on Russia as secreatry of state Marco Rubio on Wednesday emphasised that America still wants room to negotiate a peace deal.In an exclusive talk with Politico, Rubio said, “If we did what everybody here wants us to do, and that is come in and crush them with more sanctions, we probably lose our ability to talk to them about the ceasefire and then who’s talking to them?”Rubio’s remark comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders are hoping to urge Trump to tighten the economic screws on the Kremlin, after it rejected US’s push to broker a ceasefire with Ukraine.Holding fire—for nowRubio emphasised that the administration has not lifted any existing sanctions on Moscow but wants “enough flexibility” to avoid closing the diplomatic door entirely.“If he does it, you’re almost admitting that this is not going to be negotiated anytime soon,” Rubio told Politico. “We’re going to continue to engage,”he said. “In the sense that if there’s an opportunity for us to make a difference and get them to the table, we’re going to take it,” he asserted. 500% tariff on Russia?Meanwhile, the White House is working closely with senator Lindsey Graham on legislation that would slap a 500% tariff on goods from countries that continue to import Russian oil, gas, uranium, and other products, unless Moscow returns to the negotiating table in good faith.“We’ve talked to them about how to frame it, how to structure it, because ultimately, we think it needs to have enough flexibility for the president to be able to impose sanctions, and we haven’t taken off any of the sanctions that we have on,” he said.Russia still betting on the battlefieldRubio also offered a candid assessment of the state of the war, suggesting that Russia believes it can win militarily what it has failed to secure diplomatically.“Our sense of it is that the Russians are going to try to achieve in the battlefield what they’ve demanded in the negotiating table, which is certain territories [maintain] their administrative lines and the like,” he said. “We think it’s going to be a lot harder for them to achieve that than they think it’s going to be.”
