WASHINGTON, July 10 — The mechanics of the Trump administration’s push to end the war in Ukraine rest on a small circle of officials, each with a distinct piece of the portfolio. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, confirmed by the Senate on January 21, 2025, has taken the lead in direct diplomacy. On February 18, 2025, he sat down with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
That meeting in the Saudi capital was a concrete step. The claim from the administration is that diplomatic channels are open.
The catch is that there has been no public indication of a breakthrough from that Riyadh encounter, and the war grinds on.
The Chain of Command on Ukraine
Rubio is not operating alone. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, a former U.S. Army Green Beret and former congressman from Florida, has been tasked with coordinating interagency policy on Ukraine. That means he is the man in the White House who makes sure the Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community are singing from the same sheet music.
Then there is Keith Kellogg, the Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia. A retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, Kellogg has been given the job of developing a peace framework.
On closer reading, that is a specific mandate: not just talking, but drafting a structure for what an eventual settlement might look like. The economic dimension falls to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He has been involved in designing the tariff proposal.
Follow the money here: the administration appears to be thinking about using economic leverage, in the form of tariffs, as a tool to pressure Moscow or to compensate Kyiv. President Donald Trump has stated publicly that he wants the war to end quickly.
He has not provided a specific timeline. That absence of a deadline is worth noting. In a negotiation, the side with no clock often holds the advantage.
Engagement with Kyiv and NATO
The administration has also engaged directly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He met with Trump at the White House on February 28, 2025. That meeting came just ten days after Rubio’s talks in Riyadh, suggesting a pattern: sound out the Russians, then brief the Ukrainians.
European allies have not been left out. The administration has engaged with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
The source does not detail the substance of that engagement, but the inclusion of the NATO chief underscores that any peace framework will need to account for the alliance’s eastern flank. The structure here is clear: Rubio handles the face-to-face diplomacy, Waltz manages the bureaucratic machinery, Kellogg builds the blueprint, and Bessent sharpens the economic instruments. Trump sets the political direction.
Whether this machinery produces a result by the time of this writing, July 10, 2026, remains an open question. The pieces are in place.
The test will be whether they move in unison.
