WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday steered clear of calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a \u201cwar criminal,\u201d saying the priority was negotiations to end the Ukraine conflict.<\/p>\n
In a fiery congressional hearing, Democratic Representative Bill Keating recalled Rubio\u2019s heated criticism of Putin\u2019s record when the top US diplomat served as a senator, and asked him if he still believed Putin is a \u201cwar criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCrimes have been committed in the war on Ukraine, and there will be accountability for that, but our goal right now is to end that war,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause let me tell you, every single day that that war goes on, people are killed, more people are maimed and, frankly, more war crimes are being committed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Keating accused Rubio of being \u201cinconsistent\u201d and \u201cequivocating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rubio later responded to a fellow Republican by saying there was a value in speaking to Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there had not been communications between the US and Russia in 1961,\u201d Rubio said, \u201cthe world could have ended during the Cuban Missile Crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump spoke Monday by telephone to Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his latest effort, so far unsuccessful, to end the war.<\/p>\n
Putin, who had faced international isolation during former president Joe Biden\u2019s administration, has rebuffed US calls backed by Ukraine for a 30-day ceasefire.<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands have died, mainly civilians, since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n
Early in the war, dozens of civilians were found dead in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha following a months-long occupation by Russian forces.<\/p>\n
Putin faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court over the transfer of children from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine into Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday steered clear of calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a \u201cwar criminal,\u201d saying the priority was negotiations to end the Ukraine conflict. In a fiery congressional hearing, Democratic Representative Bill Keating recalled Rubio\u2019s heated criticism of Putin\u2019s record when the top US diplomat served as a senator, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":81390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81396,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81373\/revisions\/81396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}