SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, Oct 19 (Reuters) – Ukraine and Russia should be focused on ending the war between them, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on his visit to Uzbekistan on Monday.
Asked about a possible meeting of US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to negotiate an end to the four-year-old Ukraine conflict, Rubio said: “There’s been talks of a meeting. I don’t know whether it’s been finalized, but the president has been clear. He’d like the war in Ukraine and Russia to end.”The US has been trying to mediate a peace deal to bring the Ukraine war to an end and Trump has since clinched a diesel import deal with Russia and waived some sanctions on Moscow, which he said should keep the Kremlin at the negotiating table.
The moves were criticized by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. A fresh Russian air strike killed a woman in Ukraine’s Kyiv overnight while also hitting a subway station and damaging a 25-storey residential building.
Reporting by Gram Slattery in Samarkand, Uzbekistan; Writing by Jekaterīna Golubkova in Tokyo; Editing by Tom Hogue and Edwina Gibbs
