US Secretary of State Marco Rubio took to the social media platform X to unequivocally deny any credibility to a story published about him by POLITICO on Wednesday, 23 April. The news site claimed in its reporting that Secretary Rubio and US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff were debating lifting sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline and some other Russian assets in Europe as part of the peace negotiations.
However, within hours of the publication of the piece, Secretary Rubio wrote on his X page: ‘This is unequivocally false. Neither Steve Witkoff nor I have had any conversations about lifting sanctions against Russia as part of a deal with Ukraine. This is journalistic malpractice. If POLITICO has an ounce of integrity they will fully retract this piece of fiction,’ along with a screenshot of the article.
As of the time of writing this, the article in question is still available on POLITICO’s website without any editor’s note. However, Secretary Rubio’s response has been included in the article, although without any comment by the author. POLITICO is citing ‘five people familiar with the discussions’ as their source, but they are withholding their names or positions.
All this is taking place while tensions between Moscow, Kyiv, and Washington are growing as progress has been lacklustre in the peace negotiation process of the Russo–Ukrainian war. Ending the conflict in Eastern Europe was one of the central campaign promises of President Trump in the 2024 election.
A maritime and energy ceasefire was agreed by all three parties in late March. However, it was broken within a few hours of its announcement by the belligerent Russian side.
Now, the Trump administration, including Secretary Rubio, is threatening to abandon the mediator role in the conflict unless a genuine commitment to progress in the peace talks is shown imminently by both of the other two parties. In response, President Vladimir Putin of Russia announced an Easter ceasefire.
Amidst these growing tensions, the Trump administration is not afraid to throw punches in Russia’s way either—which has always been the case, despite the mainstream media narrative about President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
In fact, as the aforementioned POLITICO article itself points out, it was the first Trump administration that originally put sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in December 2019. President Biden lifted them upon taking office in 2021, but had to reinstate them after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Similarly, according to another report by POLITICO from last month, it was Secretary Rubio who convinced the Hungarian government not to veto the European Union’s motion to extend the punitive sanctions on Russia. These sanctions have been regarded as the primary tool to pressure Moscow into a lasting peace deal since peace negotiations started under by second Trump administration, and they are unlikely to give that leverage up so easily.
It is also worth noting that POLITICO was one of the many media organizations that were revealed to have received funding from the US government through the now-dismantled USAID programme.
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