NEW DELHI: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been a global player for many years, so the US cannot but communicate with him to settle the conflict in Ukraine.
"Putin is already on the world stage, " he said on Sunday in an interview with ABC News.
"He has the world's largest tactical nuclear arsenal in the world, and the second largest strategic nuclear arsenal in the world. He's already on the world stage."
"When I hear people say that, 'oh, it elevates him.' Well, all we do is talk about Putin all the time. All the media has done is talk about Putin all the time for the last four or five years, " he noted, quoted by Russian news agency Tass.
"It means you're not going to have a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, you're not going to end a war between Russia and Ukraine without dealing with Putin. That's just common sense. I shouldn't even have to say it. So, people can say whatever they want, " he added.
On August 15, a meeting between Russian and US Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump took place at a military base in Alaska. The rendezvous lasted about three hours: there was a one-on-one discussion in the American leader's limousine on the way to the main venue for the talks and a narrow "three-on-three" meeting, Tass reported.
The Russian side was also represented by Presidential aide Yury Ushakov and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while the American side was represented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff.
In a statement to the press following the talks, Putin said that the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict was the main topic of the summit.
The Russian leader also called for turning the page in bilateral relations and returning to cooperation, and invited Trump to Moscow.