Trump losing patience, frustrated by lack of progress in Russia contacts – Rubio

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this on Fox News.

"First of all, I think everyone should be very happy that the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is focused on peace. There’s nothing he wants more than to be part of peace agreements, stopping wars, preventing wars, ending wars," Rubio said.

But according to him, Trump is growing more irritated because, despite what he calls good phone talks with Putin, there’s no progress.

"I think he’s growing increasingly frustrated. Despite having very good interactions with Vladimir Putin, and phone calls, it never leads to anything. So the time has come for some action here, and I think the president has made that abundantly clear. He’s losing his patience, he’s losing his willingness to continue to wait for the Russian side to do something," Rubio said about Trump.

Rubio also repeated his claim that Russia wouldn’t have launched a full-scale war against Ukraine if Trump had been in office. Still, he said Trump is now doing "everything possible" to stop the war.

"It’s not his war, he didn’t start this war, it didn’t happen and never wouldn’t have happened if he were president. But it did, he inherits it. And he’s done everything possible to bring it to an end," the U.S. Secretary of State said.

• Earlier, on July 4, Trump said he had “made no progress” in ending the war in Ukraine after a phone call with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.