WASHINGTON: Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Tuesday that the United States would end mediation unless Russia and Ukraine put forward “concrete proposals,” as US patience wanes on an early priority for Donald Trump.
The US president had vowed to end the war in his first 24 hours back in the White House but, as Trump celebrates 100 days in office, Rubio has suggested the administration could soon turn attention to other issues.
“We are now at a time where concrete proposals need to be delivered by the two parties on how to end this conflict,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters, in what she said was a message from Rubio.
“If there is not progress, we will step back as mediators in this process.”
She said it would ultimately be up to Trump to decide whether to move ahead on diplomacy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin recently proposed a three-day ceasefire around Moscow’s commemorations next week for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.
But Putin has rebuffed a Ukrainian-backed US call for a 30-day ceasefire.
The United States wants “not a three-day moment so you can celebrate something else — a complete, durable ceasefire and an end to the conflict,” Bruce said.
It remains unclear if Rubio is actually ready to turn the page or is seeking to pressure the two countries — especially Russia, which believes it has an upper hand on the battlefield and in diplomacy since Trump’s outreach.
US diplomat James Kelley, addressing a UN Security Council session, said both sides would benefit from working off the “framework proposal” outlined by Washington.
Condemning Russian strikes on Ukraine, he said: “Right now, Russia has a great opportunity to achieve a durable peace.”
Trump, criticizing his predecessor Joe Biden’s support for Ukraine, reached out to Putin after taking office, easing him from the international isolation he has been in since he ordered the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Putin again last week met with Trump’s business friend Steve Witkoff, who has taken on the role of a globe-trotting envoy.
Trump in turn berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a February 28 White House meeting, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance accusing the wartime leader of ingratitude for US weapons.
Ukraine quickly tried to make amends by backing US diplomatic efforts and pursuing a deal in which the United States would control much of the country’s mineral wealth.
But Zelensky has held firm against one part of the US framework — formal international recognition of Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea.
Trump has insisted that Ukraine has lost Crimea and Zelensky should give it up.
Speaking by videoconference to an event in Poland on Tuesday, Zelensky said: “We all want this war to end in a fair way — with no rewards for Putin, especially no land.”
US Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Tuesday that recognizing “Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea would invite additional aggression from Moscow and Beijing.”
“I have endeavored to give President Trump the space to negotiate a just and lasting peace in Ukraine, which is a goal we both share,” she said.
“However, President Trump and his team have fatally mismanaged these negotiations — offering concession after concession to Russia, throwing away our leverage and fracturing the united front with our allies that is critical to ending this war,” she said.
Ukraine on Tuesday ordered the evacuation of seven villages in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region which used to be remote from the frontlines but are now under threat as Russian forces close in.
Russia has been trying to break into the region from the neighboring Donetsk but has not succeeded, even after more than three years of grinding battles.
Last week a ballistic missile ripped into a residential area of Kyiv in one of the deadliest attacks on the capital since the invasion.
Trump, who has boasted of his rapport with Putin, wrote, “Vladimir, STOP,” on social media after the attack.
US threatens to quit Russia-Ukraine effort unless ‘concrete proposals’
https://arab.news/wz7c4
US threatens to quit Russia-Ukraine effort unless ‘concrete proposals’
- It remains unclear if Rubio is actually ready to turn the page or is seeking to pressure the two countries — especially Russia
Afghan returnees in Bamiyan struggle despite new homes
- More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan: Sitting in his modest home beneath snow-dusted hills in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province, Nimatullah Rahesh expressed relief to have found somewhere to “live peacefully” after months of uncertainty.
Rahesh is one of millions of Afghans pushed out of Iran and Pakistan, but despite being given a brand new home in his native country, he and many of his recently returned compatriots are lacking even basic services.
“We no longer have the end-of-month stress about the rent,” he said after getting his house, which was financed by the UN refugee agency on land provided by the Taliban authorities.
Originally from a poor and mountainous district of Bamiyan, Rahesh worked for five years in construction in Iran, where his wife Marzia was a seamstress.
“The Iranians forced us to leave” in 2024 by “refusing to admit our son to school and asking us to pay an impossible sum to extend our documents,” he said.
More than five million Afghans have returned home since September 2023, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), as neighboring Iran and Pakistan stepped up deportations.
The Rahesh family is among 30 to be given a 50-square-meter (540-square-foot) home in Bamiyan, with each household in the nascent community participating in the construction and being paid by UNHCR for their work.
The families, most of whom had lived in Iran, own the building and the land.
“That was crucial for us, because property rights give these people security,” said the UNHCR’s Amaia Lezertua.
Waiting for water
Despite the homes lacking running water and being far from shops, schools or hospitals, new resident Arefa Ibrahimi said she was happy “because this house is mine, even if all the basic facilities aren’t there.”
Ibrahimi, whose four children huddled around the stove in her spartan living room, is one of 10 single mothers living in the new community.
The 45-year-old said she feared ending up on the street after her husband left her.
She showed AFP journalists her two just-finished rooms and an empty hallway with a counter intended to serve as a kitchen.
“But there’s no bathroom,” she said. These new houses have only basic outdoor toilets, too small to add even a simple shower.
Ajay Singh, the UNHCR project manager, said the home design came from the local authorities, and families could build a bathroom themselves.
There is currently no piped water nor wells in the area, which is dubbed “the dry slope” (Jar-e-Khushk).
Ten liters of drinking water bought when a tanker truck passes every three days costs more than in the capital Kabul, residents said.
Fazil Omar Rahmani, the provincial head of the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation Affairs, said there were plans to expand the water supply network.
“But for now these families must secure their own supply,” he said.
Two hours on foot
The plots allocated by the government for the new neighborhood lie far from Bamiyan city, which is home to more than 70,000 people.
The city grabbed international attention in 2001, when the Sunni Pashtun Taliban authorities destroyed two large Buddha statues cherished by the predominantly Shia Hazara community in the region.
Since the Taliban government came back to power in 2021, around 7,000 Afghans have returned to Bamiyan according to Rahmani.
The new project provides housing for 174 of them. At its inauguration, resident Rahesh stood before his new neighbors and addressed their supporters.
“Thank you for the homes, we are grateful, but please don’t forget us for water, a school, clinics, the mobile network,” which is currently nonexistent, he said.
Rahmani, the ministry official, insisted there were plans to build schools and clinics.
“There is a direct order from our supreme leader,” Hibatullah Akhundzada, he said, without specifying when these projects will start.
In the meantime, to get to work at the market, Rahesh must walk for two hours along a rutted dirt road between barren mountains before he can catch a ride.
Only 11 percent of adults found full-time work after returning to Afghanistan, according to an IOM survey.
Ibrahimi, meanwhile, is contending with a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) walk to the nearest school when the winter break ends.
“I will have to wake my children very early, in the cold. I am worried,” she said.
