Rubio says work under way to resolve ‘very difficult’ Donetsk issue in Ukraine peace talks

WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) – There is active work under way to reconcile the territorial issue of Donetsk at U.S.-mediated talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday, describing the disagreement as a key remaining issue that is “very difficult” to resolve.

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said Russia will take all of Ukraine’s Donbas region, of which Moscow’s forces control 90%, by force unless Kyiv gives it up in a peace deal. Donetsk is part of the Donbas region.

Kyiv has said it will not gift Russia territory that Moscow has failed to win on the battlefield. Polls show little appetite among Ukrainians for territorial concessions.

“It’s still a bridge we have to cross. It’s still a gap, but at least we’ve been able to narrow down the issue set to one central one, and it will probably be a very difficult one,” Rubio told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

U.S. MAY JOIN TALKS

Putin’s demand that Ukraine surrender the 20% it still holds of Donetsk, about 5,000 sq km (1,900 sq miles), has proven a major stumbling block to any deal. Most countries recognize Donetsk as part of Ukraine. Putin says Donetsk is part of Russia’s “historical lands.”

The top U.S. diplomat said there might be a U.S. presence in the follow-up Ukraine talks, but President Donald Trump’s top envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who had taken part in the previous round of talks last weekend in Abu Dhabi, will not be participating.

The talks last weekend, which included a rare face-to-face engagement between Russian and Ukrainian officials, ended without a deal, but Moscow and Kyiv said they were open to further dialogue. More discussions were expected next Sunday in Abu Dhabi, said a U.S. official who spoke to reporters at the time.

Kyiv is under mounting Trump administration pressure to make concessions to reach a deal to end Europe’s deadliest and most destructive conflict since World War Two, triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Rubio was also asked if security guarantees for Ukraine were agreed to by the U.S. and Ukrainian sides.

“I think you could argue they’re agreed to from our side of the equation. There’s obviously a Russian dynamic at play here. And of course, any security guarantees would come into play after the conflict would end,” Rubio said.

The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that Washington told Ukraine it must sign on to a peace deal with Russia to get U.S. security guarantees.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Humeyra Pamuk, Simon Lewis, Katharine Jackson;Editing by Rod Nickel)