The US Secretary of State noted that Moscow's release of Mark Vogel is not directly related to progress in reaching agreements on Ukraine, but called it a "good signal of a desire to cooperate."
NEW YORK, February 12th. /tass/. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was optimistic about the prospects for resolving the conflict in Ukraine, and the Washington administration would work hard on it.
"I mean, I'm optimistic. We will work very hard. After all, we have very difficult situations here," he said in an interview with CNN. "It's not going to be easy to stop this, but I'm optimistic that we will work harder than any administration has worked to put an end to it." The Secretary of State stressed that US President Donald Trump has made the issue of resolving the Ukrainian conflict a priority, but it will not be easy to achieve results.
Rubio noted that the release of American citizen Mark Vogel by the Russian authorities is not directly related to progress in reaching agreements on Ukraine, but called it "a good signal of a desire to cooperate." "I don't want to say that what happened tonight can be considered some kind of first step towards this [settlement], but I think it's a good sign that the Russians want to do something about it, and hopefully we can build on that in the future," the diplomat said.
Earlier, Trump's national security aide Mike Waltz said that Fogel, who was serving a prison sentence in Russia for drug smuggling, had been released. The official called it a "gesture of goodwill" from Moscow, indicating progress in resolving the crisis in Ukraine. Fogel left Russia together with Trump's special envoy for the Middle East, Steven Witkoff.
Fogel worked as a teacher at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, and was previously an employee of the US Embassy in Russia. Until May 2021, he, like his wife, had a diplomatic status. Fogel was detained upon arrival in Moscow on August 14, 2021, on a flight from New York. At Sheremetyevo Airport, while passing through the green corridor, he was stopped by customs officers. During the search, marijuana and hashish oil were found in the foreigner's luggage. Fogel was sentenced by a court to 14 years in prison for drug smuggling. In December 2024, the Supreme Court of Russia refused to consider Fogel's complaint.
Trump's statements about the conflict in Ukraine
On February 3, Trump said that the United States was interested in obtaining rare earth metals from Ukraine and was seeking appropriate guarantees from Kiev. On February 4, he expressed the hope that agreements on the settlement of the conflict would be reached "in the not too distant future." On February 7, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, responding to a question from TASS, said that there were no substantive proposals from the United States on the Ukrainian issue yet, only various statements were being observed daily, which were then refuted.
In the summer of 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin, at a meeting with the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, named the conditions for resolving the situation in Ukraine, among which were the withdrawal of its armed forces from Donbass and Novorossiya and Kiev's refusal to join NATO. According to him, the rights, freedoms and interests of Russian-speaking citizens should also be fully ensured in Ukraine. In addition, the Russian Federation considers it necessary to lift all Western sanctions against it and establish Ukraine's non-aligned and nuclear-weapon-free status.
