US State Secretary Rubio congratulates Russia on national holiday
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed his congratulations to the Russian people on Thursday on the occasion of the country's national holiday.
"The United States remains committed to supporting the Russian people as they continue to build on their aspirations for a brighter future," Rubio said.
"We also take this opportunity to reaffirm the United States' desire for constructive engagement with the Russian Federation to bring about a durable peace between Russia and Ukraine," he added.
"It is our hope that peace will foster more mutually beneficial relations between our countries," Rubio concluded in a statement issued by the State Department.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha expressed his displeasure without naming the US.
"As minister for a warring country, it was particularly unpleasant for me to read the public congratulations of certain countries addressed to the Russian aggressor," he said while on a visit to Rome, according to the Interfax Ukraine news agency.
Aggressors should not be rewarded, he said. "And I have the moral right to express this," Sybiha said. Ukraine has been warding off a full-scale Russian invasion since February 2022.
In contrast, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saw Rubio's congratulations as proof that the new US administration under President Donald Trump differs from Joe Biden's previous government.
Washington is now willing to solve problems in bilateral relations, he told Russian television.
Moscow has celebrated June 12 as Russia Day since 1992, marking the date when the the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic declared its sovereignty in 1990, one year before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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So, What Did I Miss?
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. 'How much can possibly happen when I'm on parental leave?' I said five months ago, on January 10, 2025. 'I understand that Donald Trump will be the next president, and yes, he said he'd be a dictator 'on day one,' but our institutions have been 250 years in the making. Surely something that took 250 years to build would not run entirely on the honor system! I will be able to spend a few months keeping a baby alive, and when I get back, I will be able to walk to work without bumping into the president's birthday tank parade. If he tries to put an anti-vaccine crank in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, a monstrous buffoon who thinks that it is acceptable for some children to die from measles, a disease we had eradicated until about eight minutes ago, Congress will surely stop him. There won't be goons in face coverings yanking graduate students off the street and into unmarked vans after they write op-eds with which Marco Rubio disagrees. If Elon Musk, the world's richest man, expresses the desire to fire every federal employee for no reason, so that cancer research grinds to a halt, and foreign aid grinds to a halt, and the lifesaving medications that we have already stockpiled are instead just wantonly destroyed, someone will say, 'No, thanks! Do not do that!' Or, if this does happen, the team doing it won't include an individual nicknamed Big Balls.' (When I got that specific, I should perhaps have said to myself, Doesn't that sound exactly like something that would happen? But you know what they say about predicting what will happen: much harder since all the NOAA cuts!) 'Surely they won't close down FEMA on the grounds that we won't need it after the hurricane season is over. 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