State Department Briefing, August 12, 2025: Rubio–Lavrov Call, Armenia–Azerbaijan Peace and Human Rights Report

Name: "State Department Briefing, August 12, 2025: Rubio–Lavrov Call, Armenia–Azerbaijan Peace and Human Rights Report"
Uploaded: 2025-08-12
Duration: 1 h 36 s
Description: "Spokesperson Tammy Bruce confirmed Secretary Marco Rubio's call with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov ahead of the Trump–Putin summit, announced the release of the restructured 2024 Human Rights Report, and gave a farewell address on her nomination to a UN role."

August 12, 2025 · U.S. Department of State · 1:00:36

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce led the department’s press briefing on August 12, 2025. At the top, Bruce confirmed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken by phone with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov regarding preparation for the upcoming summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, that both sides confirmed their commitment to a successful event, and that it was Putin who called to make the arrangement, as she stated it.

Bruce expressed condolences on the death of Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe, said the United States stands in solidarity with his family and the Colombian people while demanding justice, and announced that Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau would travel to Bogotá that day to attend memorial services on August 13.

Bruce presented the Armenia–Azerbaijan joint declaration for peace, signed at the White House the prior week, as reaffirming President Trump as “the president of peace,” and listed negotiated arrangements she credited to the administration involving Cambodia and Thailand, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo, in addition to the Abraham Accords. She said the two leaders also signed bilateral economic agreements with the United States covering trade, transit, energy, infrastructure and technology in the South Caucasus.

Bruce also announced the public release of the 2024 Human Rights Report, which she said had been restructured to remove redundancy, increase readability and return to the legislative mandates underpinning it rather than what she called politically biased demands. In questioning, she said the United States opposes Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces bill as inconsistent with bilateral security partnership goals and supportive of genuine Iraqi sovereignty rather than legislation that would turn Iraq into an Iranian satellite state, as she phrased the position. On Gaza, she referred questions about a strike that killed journalists to the Government of Israel and declined to discuss internal processes.

Bruce closed with personal remarks on her nomination by the President for a role at the United Nations, thanking Secretary Rubio and department staff, and said her team had conducted over 200 interviews and daily briefings in just 200 days, as she stated those figures.

Why it matters

The briefing is a single-record snapshot of the department’s August 2025 posture: summit preparation with Russia, the Armenia–Azerbaijan declaration as a flagship peace claim, a restructured human-rights report, and a spokesperson transition.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, “Department of State Press Briefing - August 12, 2025”, 2025-08-12 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-08-12). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.