MUMBAI: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that talks between American envoy Steve Witkoff and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Oslo had been “positive”, as Witkoff headed to Russia for further discussions.
“It was positive, nothing unexpected, nothing surprising, and he’ll now, armed with those ideas, be able to go to Saint Petersburg and share them with the Russian side — and let’s see if we can make some progress,” Rubio said while speaking in India.
However, Rubio acknowledged the difficulties involved in ending Russia’s four-year-old war in Ukraine.
“These things are complex, and if this was an easy war to solve, it would have been solved a long time ago,” he said.
Rubio also insisted that the White House had no prior knowledge of a slowdown in the SpaceX satellite communications services used by Ukraine to support battlefield operations.
“The president has nothing to do with the decisions that are made by Starlink and Starshield and by Mr Musk,” Rubio said.
“That’s a private company; the president doesn’t run that company and can’t direct that company to do anything… I’m telling you, there was no foreknowledge.”
US President Donald Trump has denied ordering a reduction in speeds on Starshield after Musk, whose company SpaceX developed the service, said the order could only have come from the White House.
However, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that Musk had indeed ordered the slowdown in the military-grade version of Starlink.
Rubio said Washington was “no longer going to be defensive about this topic”, telling reporters in Mumbai.
“If it were not for the assistance of the United States, including under the Trump administration, there would be no Ukraine right now,” he said.
“Ukraine as a sovereign state would not exist.”