Russia just told the UN it will not pause the war in Ukraine
23 September 2026 · 23 September 2026Share
Official portrait of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, January 2025. U.S. Department of State · Public domain
Marco Rubio just said something Russia's own foreign minister seems to contradict.
Rubio is the US Secretary of State. He met Sergei Lavrov, Russia's Foreign Minister, a few hours ago in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
And afterwards, Marco Rubio told reporters both sides want a limited ceasefire.
He says quote "an interest in some limited ceasefire that involve grain and energy." He added that it won't be easy to arrange.
But here's the problem. Minutes apart, in the same building, Sergei Lavrov told the UN Security Council something very different.
He said Russia will not pause the war. Not for negotiations. Not in any format.
Sergei Lavrov says quote "it wants to use it to pump the Kyiv regime with weapons."
So two top diplomats. Same day. Same building. Saying opposite things about whether Russia will stop fighting.
So what's going on?
It might come down to scope. A full pause means Russian troops stop everywhere. A limited ceasefire means something much smaller — Russia agrees not to hit energy plants and grain sites, while the rest of the war keeps going.
That's the line Rubio himself is drawing. A narrow deal on two sectors. Not a stop to the fighting.
And here's the thing. Russia hasn't confirmed any of this itself.
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Grain silos at a storage facility in Cambridgeshire, Great Britain. File photo. Michael Trolove · CC BY-SA 2.0
Even Rubio couldn't say for sure whether this was real movement from Lavrov, or just careful wording.
Dmitry Peskov works for the Kremlin. He had already said before the meeting that Russia sees no conditions yet for peace talks — though he said Russia remains open to them. He said Vladimir Putin would meet Donald Trump one-on-one if needed. But he repeated that any meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine's President, would have to happen in Moscow. Ukraine has already rejected that.
A day earlier, Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Donald Trump and raised an energy ceasefire directly. No deal was reached. But Zelenskyy said he was ready for quote "any format" of an energy truce if Russia stopped hitting Ukrainian infrastructure. He also asked Trump for more Patriot air-defence missiles.
Zelenskyy went further at a separate summit on Ukraine's occupied Crimea, held on the same UN sidelines. He said Ukraine was ready for a Black Sea maritime truce too, built on proposals from Egypt, India and Turkey. He said Ukraine is waiting for Russia's answer.
Andrii Sybiha is Ukraine's Foreign Minister. He told the Security Council that eleven million tonnes of food risk spoiling without free shipping in the Black Sea.
Jean-Noël Barrot is France's Foreign Minister. He backed pausing both energy strikes and Black Sea attacks as a first step. Britain and Denmark's foreign ministers also condemned Russia's war at the same session, pointing to more civilian deaths this summer.
And more than 50 countries — including Ukraine, the EU's member states, Britain, Canada and Australia — had already signed a statement demanding an immediate, unconditional ceasefire, before the Security Council even sat down.
While all of this was being said in New York, Russia carried out a rare daytime drone attack on Kyiv. Two people were killed. More than 30 were wounded. Four more people were killed in a separate strike in the Donetsk region.
So on the same day Rubio said both sides wanted a limited ceasefire, Russian drones were still hitting Ukrainian cities in daylight.
What's not known is whether Russia will actually accept limits on hitting energy sites, what it would want in return, or how any deal like that would even be enforced. Lavrov has not personally confirmed Rubio's version of events.
So right now there are three things sitting side by side. An American read of where Russia might bend. A Russian foreign minister ruling out any pause at all. And drones still falling on Ukraine while the words get worked out.
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