U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press with Kristen Welker, that a Trump Administration-brokered deal between Ukraine and Russia to end the war is “closer in general” than it’s ever been, but that diplomatic work continues.

“And as I said, and he has said and others have said, [Trump’s] done an extraordinary job at the highest levels of our government. The president has put out everybody you can imagine, Ambassador Witkoff, myself, the national security advisor, the vice president, have been involved and engaged in this effort to bring the two sides closer so we can have path to peace,” Rubio said.

President Donald Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Rome over the weekend while the pair were in town to attend the funeral of Pope Francis.

On Sunday, Russia launched a sweeping drone assault and airstrikes across Ukraine, killing at least four people, officials said.

The past week has been spent, according to Rubio, trying to see how close both sides are to finding agreement and assessing the benefit of our “continued investment of our time as a mediator.” The coming week, the top U.S. diplomat said, will be particularly important time in the pursuit of a cessation of hostilities and determining America’s role in the matter.

“I think this is going to be a very critical week. This week is going to be a really important week in which we have to make a determination about whether this is an endeavor that we want to continue to be involved in, or if it’s time to sort of focus on some other issues that are equally, if not more, important in some cases. We want to see it happen, there are reasons to be optimistic, but there are reasons to be realistic, of course, as well,” Rubio said.

In a Truth Social post, Trump said the whole problem actually began under his first predecessor, former President Barack Obama, and that the situation was made substantially worse during his four year hiatus from the White House.

“This is Sleepy Joe Biden’s War, not mine. It was a loser from day one, and should have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened if I were President at the time. I’m just trying to clean up the mess that was left to me by Obama and Biden, and what a mess it is,” the commander-in-chief wrote.

Still, Trump said, he’s not happy with the fact the war continues over his calls for its end. He also signaled he’s worried that Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing him for a fool.

“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently,” the U.S. president wrote.

“Too many people are dying,” he added.

Ahead of the pope’s funeral, Trump declared that a peace deal was near to completion and reiterated that it was well past time for both sides to sit down and negotiate.

“A good day in talks and meetings with Russia and Ukraine. They are very close to a deal, and the two sides should now meet, at very high levels, to ‘finish it off.’ Most of the major points are agreed to. Stop the bloodshed, NOW. We will be wherever is necessary to help facilitate the END to this cruel and senseless war,” the president said.

Zelenskyy, in a Sunday video address, said that the Russian government and its president like to pretend as if they are interested in peace, but he stressed that Moscow cannot be trusted to keep up their end of any bargain.

“The Russians talk a lot about their alleged readiness to accept American proposals, but so far, there have been no signs of the Russian army preparing for real silence. On the contrary, since Easter, the occupier has resumed its usual assault activity – at the cost of significant losses, the Russians are trying to advance. And every day of such battles at the front proves that Russia is really trying to deceive the world – to deceive America and others – and to further prolong this war,” he said.

Rubio said that he doesn’t think “peace deals are built on trust” alone.

“I think peace deals have to be built on verification, have to be built on facts, have to be built on action, have to be built on realities. So this is not an issue of well – of trust. It’s an issue of building in these sorts of things, verification, security guarantees, things that have been discussed in the past,” he said.

Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about possible concessions to Russia, Rubio emphasized the need to be “grownups and realistic.”

“There is no military solution to this war. The only solution to this war is a negotiated settlement where both sides are going to have to give up something they claim to want and are going to have to give the other side something they wish they didn’t,” he said.

The fighting in Ukraine began in 2014, when Putin illegally invaded and annexed Crimea. It continued in a pair of separatist regions in the eight years that followed, but exploded into full-scale conflict in February of 2022.

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