US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday.
According to the White House, Rubio reiterated US President Donald Trump’s call for the killing to stop as well as “the need for Moscow to take meaningful steps toward a durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war.”
The meeting was the first between representatives of the US and Russia since Tuesday’s apparent dramatic reversal in Trump’s stance on Ukraine.
In a Truth Social post – after a meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky that Zelensky described as “good” – the US president said that he now believed Ukraine could regain its entire territory.
Trump also poured scorn on the state of Russia’s war economy and its failure to achieve its Ukraine objectives, adding that it was beginning to look like a “paper tiger.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitriy Peskov rejected this characterization on Wednesday – telling state media that Russia is not a tiger but a bear, as per Politico.
“Russia is by no means a tiger. Russia is traditionally seen as a bear. There is no such thing as paper bears. Russia is a real bear… there is nothing paper about it,” Peskov reportedly said.
Also on Wednesday, Zelensky gave his UN general assembly address. The president emphasized the inability of international institutions alone to safeguard their member countries’ safety or uphold international law.