FOX News host Sean Hannity asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio for an update on U.S. attempts to get Russia and Ukraine to come to a peace deal, as Ukraine agrees to a mineral rights deal with President Trump, during an interview Thursday night:

SEAN HANNITY, FNC: Let me go back to Putin for one more second. The mineral deal-I don’t think we can overstate how important that is going to be for Ukraine’s security, the relationship they will have moving forward with the United States. That’s a big part of the puzzle. It is important for people to understand the four years when Donald Trump was president, from 2017 until he left office in 2021, no problems with Vladimir Putin. But in 2014, 11 years ago, that is when Crimea was annexed. When Joe Biden was president and Putin was amassing troops on the border, military equipment on the border, he’s asked what happens if he invades, of course, he was going to invade. He said, “It depends if it is a minor incursion. And it makes you wonder, nobody ever dared to pick up a phone and even attempt or try to stop it from happening. That, to me, is unconscionable. In your heart, do you feel like we are close to-we are in the middle of this? SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: That not only happened in 2014 under President Obama, but during that time, the Obama administration refused to provide the Ukrainians any military weapons. They provided blankets and sheets and towels, but they would not give them weapons. Donald Trump, when he was president the first time, provided them the weapons that actually helped to stop the Russian tanks from taking Kiev, even when he was no longer in the White House a few years later. This invasion would never have happened if Donald Trump were in the White House, but it did. It happened under Joe Biden, a few months after the fiasco in Afghanistan. I think everybody realized Putin saw that and realized, “Now’s my time to go. I have a weak president under Joe Biden,” and he went. And this war dragged on for three years. You ask how close we are-I think we know where Ukraine is, and we know where Russia is right now, where Putin is. They’re still far apart. They are closer, but they are still far apart. It would take a real breakthrough very soon to make this possible, where I think the President will have to make a decision about how much more time we would dedicate to this. You’re right about the minerals deal. That is good for America because we have invested a lot of money in this war. Also good for Ukraine because it will help them be able to develop their economy and rebuild when this war ends.

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