Reuters: Rubio to skip meeting of NATO foreign ministers at key moment for Ukraine

Secretary of State of the United States Marco Rubio is planning to skip a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels next week, which is highly unusual for a key event amid negotiations to resolve Russia's war against Ukraine. This was reported by the agency Reuters, citing two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Instead of Rubio, Washington will be represented by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, one of the interlocutors said.

It is unclear why Rubio is planning to skip the December 3 meeting, or whether his plans may change. However, his likely absence coincided with US and Ukrainian officials attempting to bring their positions closer together on a "peace plan," with some European diplomats complaining that they were being excluded from the process.

There are usually two official meetings of NATO foreign ministers each year, and U.S. secretaries of state are rarely absent. In 2017, during the first term of Donald Trump the then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson initially planned to skip the April meeting, but it was postponed to accommodate his schedule.

A State Department spokesperson declined to comment on Rubio's possible absence, but said that the Alliance has been "completely renewed" under the Trump administration and noted that the head of US diplomacy recently met with several European officials in Switzerland.

"Secretary Rubio also regularly meets and communicates with NATO allies, including last weekend in Geneva," he emphasized.

A senior State Department official said that Rubio has been attending enough meetings.

"Secretary Rubio has already attended dozens of meetings with NATO allies, and it would be completely impractical to expect him to attend every meeting," the official said.

Rubio's absence risks deepening questions about Washington's commitment to European security, which has already suffered in recent years. The United States is the de facto leader of NATO, but Trump has repeatedly expressed doubts about the need for the alliance and has at times hinted that he might withdraw from it.

Landau, who will be attending on behalf of the United States, questioned the need for NATO in a June post on X that he later deleted.

• On November 26, Rubio called it a fake, an article about how the Trump administration has two diametrically opposed approaches to resolving the war. NBC News wrote about the two camps led by Vance and Rubio.