Almost all of NATO's foreign ministers gathered in Brussels on Wednesday, a day after inconclusive Ukraine peace talks between the United States and Russian President Vladimir Putin and as European officials struggled for a seat at the negotiating table.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that despite the absence of Secretary of State Marco Rubio — believed to be the first time in 22 years that America's top diplomat did not attend a ministerial gathering of this kind — he remained "very much involved" in the process.
Rutte later told journalists that President Donald Trump’s efforts were central to ending the war.
“There is only one person in the whole world who was able to break the deadlock ... and that is the American president,” he told reporters.
Trump said at a gathering of reporters Wednesday that special envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner had a good meeting with Putin on Tuesday.
"What comes out of that meeting? I can’t tell you, because it does take two to tango," Trump said.
He added: "Their impression was that they’d like to, he would like to see the war ended. I think he’d like to get back to dealing a more normal life. I think I’d like to be trading with the United States of America, frankly, instead of losing thousands of soldiers a week. But their impression was very strongly that he’d like to make a deal."
Following the meeting with Putin in Moscow, Witkoff and Kushner invited Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, to a meeting in Miami on Thursday, a senior U.S. official told NBC News on Wednesday.
Umerov accepted, the official said, and negotiations for a potential peace deal will continue in Florida on Thursday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday on X that world powers need to keep pressuring Russia about the conflict.
"Right now, the world clearly feels that there is a real opportunity to end the war, and current diplomatic activity in negotiations must be backed by pressure on Russia," Zelenskyy said. "Everything depends on this combination — constructive diplomacy plus pressure on the aggressor. Both components work toward peace."
Some European nations have expressed extreme disquiet at apparently having been sidelined in talks, however.
“For any plan to work, it needs Ukrainians and Europeans on board,” the E.U.’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, told reporters last month.
Lithuania’s national security adviser, Kęstutis Budrys, told journalists in Brussels last month that Europe’s security “must not be discussed without Europe.”
Russia wanted “to push out Americans from Europe and to review the security architecture” on the continent, he added.
Lithuania sits between the Russian territory of Kaliningrad and Belarus, a staunch Kremlin ally, and the Soviet Union occupied it until the end of communism in 1990. It and fellow Baltic states Latvia and Estonia have long feared an emboldened Russia.
European leaders were also blindsided by Trump’s 28-point plan last month, which was seen as leaving not just Ukraine, but also the whole continent vulnerable.
Rubio's absence from the summit was "unusual," said William Alberque, NATO's former arms control director. The last time he could remember such an absence was when Colin Powell was absent in 2003, which was attributed to the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Asked why Rubio would not meet with NATO allies, especially during the ongoing Ukraine war negotiations, a senior State Department official told NBC News that he "has already attended dozens of meetings with NATO allies, and it would be completely impractical to expect him at every meeting."
Despite having been sidelined in discussions between Moscow and Washington, European leaders could still have "a direct impact on the talks" and "continue to guide the process," Alberque said.
He added that "it may seem that the Europeans are powerless in the face of Trump’s style of leadership" but that "we already have seen the so-called 'peace plan' change radically over the past days, with Ukrainian and European concerns increasingly reflected."
Before he met with Witkoff and Kushner on Tuesday, Putin launched into a tirade against Europe, criticizing European leaders for hindering Trump’s peace efforts, from which, he said, Europe has removed itself. Russia has no intention of going to war with European countries, he told reporters, but if Europe starts a war, there can be no doubt about Russia’s readiness to respond “right now.”
Stefan Wolff, a professor of international security at England’s University of Birmingham, said Putin's rhetoric was part of the Russian narrative that Europe is undermining Trump’s efforts to end the war and that if it weren't for European obstruction, a deal would long ago have been done.
"That is probably true, but it's a good thing, because any such deal would be bad for Ukraine, bad for Europe and ultimately bad for the U.S.,” he said.
There was no real expectation of a breakthrough heading into the talks in Moscow, as the Kremlin did not show any intention of easing off on its hard-line demands.
Still, Moscow called the five-hour conversation “useful” and said some points could be agreed on, while Putin viewed others “negatively.” The parties also discussed the issue of territories — a key and very sensitive point for Ukraine — and some American proposals on that looked “more or less acceptable” to the Kremlin. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that the talks were the first such “direct exchange of opinions,” adding that Putin did not reject the U.S. plan.
Also Wednesday, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, said the U.S. team had invited the Ukrainian delegation to "continue our talks in America in the near future."
