Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called on Ukrainian President Volodmia Zelensky to apologise for turning Friday's explosive oval office meeting into a “bad failure.”
After stepping out of the 47-year-old Ukrainian leader, Rubio took responsibility for Zelensky's approach and accused him of hostile to President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.
“I apologize for turning this into a huge failure for him,” Rubio said. Kaitlan Collins from CNN on friday. “There was no need for him to go there and be hostile.”
Rubio claimed that the first 45 minutes of sincerity had fallen off the rails when Zelensky asked Vance about his lack of diplomacy in war-torn regions.
Vance then accused Zelensky of a “litigation” in front of the media.
“This is serious,” Rubio said. “Thousands of people have been killed, and (Zelensky) tells us all this horrible thing that happened to war and the prisoners of children, and everything is true. This is what we are dealing with, and we need to end it.”
Instead of a one-on-one discussion, Rubio, 53, laid out his vision of how consultations should be held to end the three-year war in Ukraine.
“The way you can finish it is to take you to the table to speak Russia, and (Zelensky) understands it,” Rubio said.
Rubio accused Zelensky of stabbing Trump and attacking the 78-year-old commander of Russian President Vladimir Putin, seeking Russia to pay the costs of reconstruction.
“You're not going to take people to the table when you start talking about these things actively and when the president is a contract maker,” he added.
“You begin to realize that Zelensky may not want a peace agreement. He says he won't. And that active, open effort to bring about peace is extremely frustrating for everyone who has been involved in communication with them to this day.”
Rubio also hopes Zelensky will apologize for how the meeting is finished, and he is not worried that Trump will “suck” at a fake deal with Putin.
“The goal here is to explore whether peace is possible,” Rubio added. “I don't know, but I think so, but we have to explore that. How else will this war end?”
Zelensky denied any fraud in his first public disclosure since his debate with Trump on Friday.
“I don't know if we've done anything wrong,” Zelensky told Fox News chief political anchor Brett Bayer. “I respect the President and I respect the Americans.”
He argued he was ready to further the debate that would have included signing a rare earth and mineral trade with the United States on Friday.
“We said we have to sign this [mining] The documentation, and we are prepared for this, and this will be the first step in security assurance. But that's not enough,” Zelensky said.
“It's just a ceasefire without security guarantees. It's very sensitive to our people… Everyone is afraid of it. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will be back tomorrow. We want just and lasting peace. That's true. Security guarantee is required. ”
