At a Senate hearing soon after President Trump’s first election eight years ago, Marco Rubio had a simple question for the next U.S. secretary of state: “Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal?”
Mr. Rubio, then a Florida senator, posed the question to the Texas oilman Rex Tillerson at his confirmation hearing in January 2017. He would have known well that he was putting Mr. Tillerson in an awkward position. Mr. Trump was an open admirer of Mr. Putin, despite the Russian leader’s pariah status in the West and — against the advice of Mr. Rubio and many others in Congress — hoped to restore fractured relations between Washington and Moscow.
Mr. Tillerson dodged the question, saying he needed to study the evidence before drawing conclusions. Mr. Rubio tried again, this time ticking off atrocities committed by Russia’s military and the many suspicious murders of Mr. Putin’s critics. Mr. Tillerson again deflected.
The exchange left Mr. Rubio visibly frustrated. “I find it discouraging, your inability to cite that which I think is globally accepted,” Mr. Rubio said.
Secretary of state is “the second most important position in the U.S. government, with all due respect to the vice president,” because of its global influence, he later told Mr. Tillerson. It was critical, he added, that the job’s occupant speak with “moral clarity.”
Eight years later, Mr. Rubio is in an awkward position of his own. Over 14 years as a senator, Mr. Rubio was a national security hawk who prided himself on challenging tyrants and defending human rights. He was particularly outspoken when it came to Mr. Putin (“bloodthirsty,” “a butcher,” “a monster”) and warned that he could not be trusted in negotiations.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, Mr. Rubio urged the Biden administration to say that the United States would support the Ukrainians “as long as they are willing to fight.” And he expressed fresh disgust with Mr. Putin, even speaking with approval of the idea that the Russian leader might be overthrown or assassinated by internal enemies. “I think the whole world wishes that,” he said.
But a day after last November’s election, Mr. Rubio said in a television interview that the Ukraine conflict was stalemated and should be settled. “You don’t have to be a fan of Vladimir Putin to want to end the war,” he said.
And in Saudi Arabia this week, Mr. Rubio found himself leading the first senior U.S. delegation to negotiate with Kremlin officials in more than three years, charged by Mr. Trump to reach an agreement to end the war in Ukraine — and potentially turn Russia from an enemy into an ally.
“It’s not an easy position for Rubio to be in,” said John R. Bolton, who served as national security adviser to Mr. Trump before becoming a sharp critic of the president. While Mr. Rubio is more knowledgeable and experienced on Russia than most Trump officials, Mr. Bolton said, “he is operating in an environment where knowledge and experience doesn’t mean anything.”
Noting that Mr. Trump had falsely claimed that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was a deeply unpopular “dictator” who provoked Russia into war, Mr. Bolton said he was “repeating Russian propaganda lines.”
A senior administration official said Mr. Rubio had not changed his views of Mr. Putin or his government and had no illusions that diplomacy with Moscow would be easy or without risk. But Mr. Rubio believes it is worth reaching out to Russia because he agrees with Mr. Trump that the war in Ukraine should come to an end, and that limited cooperation with Russia on issues like North Korea’s nuclear program could be in America’s interest, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
During an interview on Thursday with the veteran journalist Catherine Herridge, Mr. Rubio said Mr. Trump “wants to know, are the Russians serious about ending the war or not serious about ending the war?”
“The only way is to test them, to basically engage them and say, ‘OK, are you serious about ending the war, and if so, what are your demands?” Mr. Rubio said. “Are your public demands and your private demands different?”
Some people familiar with Mr. Rubio’s record said he may hope to influence Mr. Trump behind the scenes. Many previous Trump advisers, including Mr. Bolton, have tried to contain Mr. Trump, with unhappy results.
“Several times during my tenure I wondered why I was there,” Mr. Bolton said. Advisers seeking to restrain Mr. Trump are at least as likely to be fired, as was Mr. Bolton, as they are to alter his policies.
In public, at least, Mr. Rubio has been a good soldier. After meeting with Russian officials in Riyadh — joined by Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and the president’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff — Mr. Rubio made clear that the scope of the negotiations would extend well beyond the fate of Ukraine. Future discussions would involve geopolitical and economic cooperation, he said, including “incredible opportunities” for American businesses.
The Russians seemed eager to do business, the administration official said. The Americans were prepared for a lecture from Russia’s longtime foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, who is well known for his tedious harangues. But in Riyadh, the official said, Mr. Lavrov said he would dispense with a detailed opening explanation of Russia’s views on Ukraine because Mr. Putin had already laid them out in public speeches. That was taken as a small gesture of good faith, the official said.
But the meeting itself was widely criticized by European officials and analysts who say that talks without preconditions inherently reward Russia’s aggression, and that Ukraine was unfairly excluded from a discussion of its fate. Some analysts said Mr. Rubio seemed to uncritically accept Russian talking points, including that the United States and Russia cannot “deconflict on things that could lead to dangerous confrontations” until Ukraine is resolved.
And some said it was particularly jarring to hear Mr. Rubio speaking of Mr. Putin as a potentially reliable negotiating partner after years of warning that he could not be trusted.
Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a Russia expert with the Center for a New American Security, said she was particularly distressed to hear Mr. Rubio say in Riyadh that an agreement would require concessions from “all sides.”
“My jaw fell to the floor,” said Ms. Kendall-Taylor, who advised President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s transition team.
“That he could come out and with a straight face say that he thinks the Russians are interested in negotiations, and that all sides have to make concessions?” she said. “Because there has not been one sign of the Russians being willing to make any concessions.”
Ms. Kendall-Taylor noted that the meeting had barely ended before Mr. Lavrov, in his own public remarks, added new negotiating conditions, including that Russia would make no territorial concessions, ruling out returning land it had taken.
If Mr. Rubio feels he can responsibly shape Mr. Trump’s diplomacy with Mr. Putin, she said, the key question is: “Where do you draw the line? You’d better know in advance what your red lines are.”
To be sure, Mr. Rubio is hardly the first diplomat to bargain with an avowed enemy.
Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated a nuclear deal with an Iranian government that helped Iraqi insurgents kill hundreds of American troops. President Bill Clinton’s envoy, Richard Holbrooke, held extensive talks with the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, whom he considered a genocidal war criminal, to achieve peace in the Balkans. And Mr. Trump’s second secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, struck a deal in 2020 with Taliban leaders whom he had previously branded as terrorists for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
But in each of those instances, U.S. presidents struck compartmentalized agreements with foreign rivals while maintaining hostile relations overall. Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin appear to see Ukraine as a vehicle for transforming the U.S.-Russia relationship.
The Russians are “looking at a restoration of a more or less normal diplomatic relationship with the United States,” said Thomas Graham, a Russia expert with the Council on Foreign Relations.
With Mr. Trump expressing a similar desire, Mr. Rubio may find himself balancing his duty to the president with his own deep reservations about Mr. Putin.
When Mr. Trump sought to cultivate a relationship with the Russian leader in his first term, Mr. Rubio, from his perch in the Senate, sounded a public alarm.
“Vladimir Putin is not interested in a better working relationship with the United States,” Mr. Rubio told an audience in July 2018. “He believes that the only way to make Russia stronger is to make America weaker.”
