Can Rubio end the Ukraine war?

Donald Trump promised peace on day one. Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. But 316 days into his second term, things seem to be moving in the opposite direction in Gaza and Venezuela. And the proposed peace deal between Russia and Ukraine has just one little problem. Everyone hates it. — Decisions with implications for Europe and NATO interests need the joint support of European partners and NATO allies, respectively. — To get things back on track, Trump's envoy is in Russia today to try to rescue the deal. But it's one man, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is maybe the most important player. Can Rubio make peace between Russia and Ukraine? That's coming up on Today Explained from Vox. Thank you. T-L-A-S-S-I-A-N dot com slash J-I-R-A. Atlassian dot com slash Jira. AI agents are getting pretty impressive. You might not even realize you're listening to one right now. We work 24-7 to resolve customer inquiries. No hold music, no canned answers, no frustration. Visit Sierra dot AI to learn more. This is Today Explained. Hey, I'm John Hudson. I'm a national security reporter with The Washington Post. Let's start with the team leading the Ukraine peace negotiations out of Washington. Who does Trump have doing it and what do we know about them? Yeah, it's an interesting team. He's got the main person leading it, which is Steve Witkoff, his special envoy, longtime friend, maybe one of his closest personal friends throughout his political and business evolution. He's got the Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, who is a close longtime contact of Vice President Vance. You've got his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and you've got Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio. So there's been a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and I don't know if anybody had a Thanksgiving experience recently with a lot of cooks in the kitchen. You've had confusion. You've had different things being directed to different people. And it's been a little bit chaotic. And at the same time, they've probably pushed the ball closer to a deal than has happened before. But they're not getting any style points in the process. I do want to focus on one member of the team who I talked about, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. What has been his role in this? And how should we see his lane in these Ukraine peace talks versus people like Wyckoff or Kushner or others? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, he's taken an increasingly prominent role. At the moment when things were looking probably the messiest earlier last month, essentially when Witkoff had his discussions with his Russian counterparts and some of his plan leaked, this 28-point plan, which a lot of Republicans and Democrats balked at as being too favorable towards Russia. For those who oppose the Russian invasion and want to see Ukraine prevail as a sovereign and democratic country, it is clear that Witkoff fully favors the Russians. He cannot be trusted to lead these negotiations. Actual traitor. Steve Witkoff is supposed to work for the United States, not Russia. That's when Trump tapped Rubio and Rubio came in. He met with the Ukrainians in Geneva and he inched the deal slightly more in favor of the Ukrainians. So it is in my personal view that we've had probably the most productive and meaningful meeting so far. And so we're working through making some changes, some adjustments. Very productive first session with distinguished American delegation. We have very good progress and we are moving forward to the just and lasting peace. Some important things were taken out of the 28-point plan. For instance, there was a ban on Ukraine ever entering NATO. There was different restrictions on Ukraine's military that were included in that deal. Those were watered down and taken away after Rubio met with the Ukrainians. And so in general, what his role has been is trying to make what Whitkoff started negotiating with the Russians into a more palatable form. And that role continued into this Thanksgiving weekend with meetings with the Ukrainians in Miami. And what happens from there is Whitcoff then flies to Moscow and then brings that proposal for what the Trump administration's goal is, completing the deal and getting something that all sides can agree to. Interesting. So it seems as if Rubio was brought in after the blowback from some of that Wyckoff plan leaking and that Rubio seems to have what we may describe as a more traditional Republican foreign policy view and one that seems to incorporate kind of Ukrainian desires, at least more frontally. Is that fair to say? That's exactly right. Rubio is your traditional foreign policy hawk. His natural predisposition is to be extremely suspicious of Russia, hawkish towards Russia. I think their goals are very clear to maintain their weapons capabilities in a way that furthers their desire to be a dominant power at our expense, if possible, and to diminish our capabilities in return. Never really trusting its motives and extremely supportive of traditional U.S. allies, which the Ukrainians would be considered in this respect. So he has reverted to that role towards his instincts without trying to totally throw a wrench into this peace deal process. How should we think about this Rubio view of the world, which I think we would describe as kind of more traditional Republican foreign politics, kind of pre-Trump? And how does that fit in with this administration, which has embraced so much kind of like situational isolation? Rubio would seem to be at odds with the White House on some of this. Is he Yeah No I think that right I think that was going into the formation of this administration That was the question everybody had of course because like Rubio is the OG foreign policy Right exactly You know it used to be difficult to find a war that Rubio was not interested in the United States getting involved in. Is it not, if in fact we want to stabilize Ukraine, isn't part of that stabilization to give them the ability to defend themselves in the future from any other aggression that may exist? We are at war with a radical jihadist group more capable than any terrorist group and any armed insurgency this nation has ever confronted. We can defeat them if we employ the power of the United States. If you cross this threshold, you will face military action on the part of the United States. We don't want that to happen. But the risk of a nuclear Iran is so great that that option must be on the table. That kind of muscular U.S. foreign policy we're used to hearing about. That was him. That was his stock in trade. What I will say is he is still that man And those are still his perspectives. But he has had to suppress a lot of those urges in taking this job. And in many ways, he has suppressed that while, you know, looking at the world as an entire global chessboard. So, like, yes, he would like a extremely hawkish policy on Venezuela. He'd like it in the Middle East and he'd like it in Europe. But where does it matter more? I think for him, Latin America is more important. And so he's he's winning when it comes to Venezuela. But he's on Russia and Europe issues in general. I can tell you he has he immediately upon coming into office started engaging with his counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. And from all of the readouts that I've gotten from those conversations, it has been pragmatic. He has not been sort of a fire-breathing hawk. And so this evolution of Marco Rubio happened very early on, and he's been quite amenable to Trump's priorities and trying to be a helpful facilitator and not push Trump where he's uncomfortable being pushed on. Now, last week, a group, a bipartisan group of senators came out and said that Rubio told them that a 28-point peace plan the U.S. was pushing Ukraine to accept was actually written by Russia. The leaked 28-point plan, which according to Secretary Rubio, is not the administration's position. It is essentially the wish list of the Russians. Can you recap of what we know about that plan and what happened there? Yeah, a super confusing incident. And what I attribute to is just having all of these cooks in the kitchen. And when he was brought in was at a sort of peak moment when the Trump administration and Steve Whitcoff in particular were being criticized for putting together a deal that was very pro-Russian in the way that many people viewed it. And people were saying, you know, it might actually just be a copy and paste of a Russian wish list. And piling on all of this, there was a security conference happening in Canada. And some lawmakers on record during panels said that, in fact, Rubio himself told them that this was a straight up Russian wish list. Rubio has since denied that. He got on the phone with those senators after they said it and said, no, you misinterpreted what I said. All we can say is this was very ugly and messy. It was a very sort of ugly look for the administration. And nobody really had a lot of confidence in the process at that point. And these questions continue to dog the administration to this day. My last question is, what should we expect from the talks this week? Do we know anything about what might be the outcome? So I think the smart money is on the Russians having a pretty negative reaction to what they're seeing, but possibly not negative enough to make Trump angry. They have tried to really walk the fence when it comes to that. What we need to understand is a few things. One, how much has Marco Rubio shifted this deal in the favor of the Ukrainians? If he shifted it too far in favor of Kiev, we're expected to see a negative reaction from the Russians. At the same time, Ukraine is embroiled in a corruption scandal. It's possible that they may have softened their position significantly out of fear that the Trump administration might cut them off completely in terms of military and intelligence support. So that's not a simple answer to your question. And basically, long story short, there's a lot of unknowns of what's going to happen. What we should first see is, are they going to make the terms of the deal public? And once they do, how is Moscow going to react? All of the big unknowns right now. Well, we don't come to you for simple, John. We come for you for nuance. And so we appreciate your time. And thank you. 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It's Today Explained, and I'm Ested Herndon. Luke Harding has been reporting from Ukraine for the last four years, and we've heard from him several times on the show. He's also covered Putin for several years inside Russia. So he is, to say the least, a little skeptical about the efforts by the U.S. and Russia to make peace in Ukraine. This peace deal, in inverted commas, I'm waving my arms around just to make clear this is inverted commas, was released 28-point peace deal, which the Trump administration said it was a US plan. And actually, of course, it wasn't a US plan at all. It was a Russian plan. Basically, it was a surrender document that was cooked up between Steve Wyckoff, Trump's special envoy, who's been to Moscow many times. He's making his sixth trip to Russia as we speak. And Kirill Dmitriev, who is Vladimir Putin's emissary, a businessman. And they got together in October in Miami at Wyckoff's place and hammered out this deal, again, in inverted commas. And it was originally written in Russian. And I think I was the first person to point this out. I speak Russian. I read the text and these kind of Russian bureaucratic phrases leapt out at me. Things like, one of the phrases was, it is expected that Russia will not attack any other country. It is expected. It's a very weird sort of passive, clunky formulation instead, unless you speak Russian, in which case you recognize immediately that it's ajedadza, ajedadza. And this is a sort of bureaucratic thing chucked into newspaper reports, into negotiations, ajedadza. Well, can you tell me what are the top lines from the 28-point peace plan that has since become 19? And can you tell me which parts of it are specifically offensive to the Ukrainian side? Well, instead, basically all of it. It demands that Ukraine withdraws from the Donbass, Donetsk province, including areas in the north of Donetsk, where I was recently, where hundreds of thousands of people live, civilians still, that Ukraine just withdraws. even though Russia's been unable to conquer since 2014. There's also a veto over Ukraine's future security choices saying that Ukraine can't join NATO, that there are restrictions on its EU membership, and there are no meaningful security guarantees from the American side. It prohibits European peacekeepers. I mean, it's bonkers. It's just a Kremlin wish list. For Russia, by Russia. For Russia, by Russia, but also with the support of Donald J. Trump. I mean, OK, so I get why Ukraine isn't happy. And I understand why that also applies to NATO and Europe. But now it seems that the Thanksgiving deadline has come and gone without this being signed, the deadline that Trump imposed. I don't have a deadline. I just, you know, the deadline for me is when it's over. U.S. and Russia are having talks on Tuesday. Where do we expect this to go from here? An actual peace deal is going nowhere. That there won't be a peace deal. The Russians don't want a peace deal. Their strategy is to push forward village by smash village in the east and south of Ukraine, create facts on the ground, and meanwhile to screw as many concessions as they can from the American side. There will be talks that there is a process that the Russians are dangling all sorts of deals in front of the American delegation featuring the Arctic, oil, critical minerals, American oil majors returning to the Russian market, which they left after 2022 and so on. So it's not just Ukraine. It's much bigger. And I mean, it's more business than geopolitics. So this will continue. But actually, there's no end to the war in sight. can we go back and compare it to maybe uh previous peace plans that were on the table how is this one similar or different to uh previous options that uh russia was presented with i mean the thing is that all of these plans i mean they've been various iterations there are three things which are not resolved and really i would say at the moment not resolvable One of them is how Ukraine ends up. Now, most Ukrainians accept that some loss of territory is inevitable. It's going to be very hard and possible to get everything back. But the sort of Ukrainian starting point is the existing front line. And that's the European position as well. The Russian position is that large chunks of Ukraine, four provinces, only one of which Russia fully controls, are now part of Russia. Can you tell me about the author of this peace plan? You mentioned his name previously, Kirill Dmitriev. It seems as if he's Putin's special envoy and is playing a big part of this round of peace talks. Who is he? Well Dmitriev he speaks fluent English He studied in the U Ironically enough he grew up in Kyiv and then moved to Moscow And he is ambitious He is ruthless He is not actually from the sort of traditional Russian diplomatic institutional background. He's not from the foreign ministry. He's more of a kind of commerce guy, a kind of business guy. And he's also a really prolific tweeter and user of X. And he's got one ultimate reader of mine, and that's Donald Trump. And it's all about globalists stopping peace, how Russia and America are working together to end this conflict and so I mean, so he's very much kind of leaning into Trumpian rhetoric about getting a deal and so on. But I mean, what's interesting about it is it's right in the sweet spot from a Russian point of view where sort of a MAGA ideology and Russian ideology overlaps. There's a sort of pitch that these two countries are natural allies rather than adversaries, that they are conservative, they are Christian, they hate woke, they hate gay people, trans people, etc. There's a sort of civilizational element, that they're strong, sovereign countries, great powers with spheres of influence. You mentioned how Dmitriev is a commerce guy and how previously you talked about how central Donald Trump's business interests are to how the United States is approaching this peace plan between Russia and Ukraine. Should we see Dmitriev's role in this peace plan as just another sign that this is more about business to the White House than it is about so-called peace? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there was an absolutely fascinating investigation by the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, laying this bare and showing that some of the beneficiaries or the possible beneficiaries of a reset with Russia are people close to Trump, friends, donors and so on, that there have been secret meetings, back channels between, for example, ExxonMobil and Russian oil majors, which are run by friends of Vladimir Putin's, people like Gennady Timchenko, Arkady Rotenberg. These are basically Putin's bankers. So you mentioned how Russia and Putin don't seem to have a clear incentive to find peace or anything. They're seeking to drag this out. So what should we expect this week in terms of these negotiations? Is there any takeaway that's likely to come from this? I mean, I think the only takeaway is Trump's infinite capacity to believe that the Russians are sincere when they are absolutely not sincere at all. I mean, there'll be plenty of rhetoric about how they made great progress, there were brilliant talks, etc., etc. But what you have to remember is that Russia's demands, essentially for Ukraine's capitulation, have not changed since 2022. They are the same. Considering the importance of U.S. support of Ukraine, how should we view the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who's been playing a newly important role? How has his involvement impacted these discussions? I mean, I think Marco Rubio, in his role in these negotiations, I think they're absolutely fascinating because Rubio, I think, is serious. His comments after negotiations on Sunday with the Ukrainian delegation were interesting. I mean, he talked about not just about Ukraine surviving as a modern state, but also prospering. And, you know, I think it's interesting. And it seems to me there's a clear division between Rubio, who is more of a traditionalist in the foreign policy mold, and I think believes in American power and is less enamored of Russia. And J.D. Vance, actually, who really, really appears to hate Ukraine and to be all in for Russia and more on the kind of isolationist wing. And Rubio is a sort of traditional foreign policy person who I think doesn't wholly want to sell out Ukraine, genuinely wants peace. I think Rubio is an absolutely key player of all this. And I'm just curious as to who is going to win this competition between Vance and Rubio over the coming months and years. That's Luke Harding of The Guardian. This episode was produced by Kelly Wessinger and edited by Maranza Kennedy. It was fact-checked by Hadi Mawagdi and Miles Bryan. It was engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tadashor. And one last note, it's Giving Tuesday today. And this holiday season, we invite you to join Vox as an annual member, and we'll gift a free membership to a reader who can't afford it. By joining today, you'll get 30% off of your annual membership, and we'll match that membership. So go to vox.com slash members to join. That's vox.com slash members to join. I'm Estet Herndon, and this is Today Explained. What do walking 10,000 steps every day, eating five servings of fruits and veggies, and getting eight hours of sleep have in common. They're all healthy choices. But do all healthier choices really pay off? With prescription plans from CVS Caremark, they do. Their plan designs give your members more choice, which gives your members more ways to get on, stay on, and manage their meds. And that helps your business control your costs, because healthier members are better for business. Go to cmk.co.access to learn more about helping your members stay adherent. That's cmk.co slash access. 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