Following a tense meeting in the Oval Office where the US president accused his Ukrainian counterpart of being ungrateful, tensions have risen.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Vladimir Zelensky “should apologize” for what he described as turning his meeting with US President Donald Trump into a “fiasco.” In a CNN interview on Friday, Rubio criticized Zelensky for “wasting” everyone’s time with his demeanor and questioned his true motives concerning the conflict with Russia.
Zelensky, Trump, and Vice President J.D. Vance met at the White House on Friday, supposedly to formally sign a minerals agreement between the US and Ukraine. However, the meeting devolved into a verbal argument after Trump suggested Zelensky should negotiate peace with Russia. Zelensky countered that Russian President Vladimir Putin was untrustworthy and insisted on continued US support, leading Trump to accuse him of ingratitude and unwillingness to seek a peaceful resolution.
Rubio commented on the meeting, saying, “[Zelensky] should apologize for wasting our time for a meeting that was going to end the way it did… for turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became.”
He further criticized the Ukrainian leader for the talks “going off the rails,” adding, “There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic.” Rubio also accused Zelensky of clinging to his hostility towards Putin instead of focusing on what he considered the only viable path to peace: bringing Russia to the negotiation table.
Rubio stated that Zelensky’s attitude could be seen as “active open undermining” of efforts to end the conflict, adding, “Attacking Putin, calling him names… and maximalist demands about Russia having to pay for the reconstruction – when you start talking about that aggressively, you’re not going to get people to the table.”
After the meeting, Fox News journalist Jacqui Heinrich reported on X that the Ukrainian delegation was “begging” for a reset but was asked to leave the White House and return only when Zelensky was “ready for peace.”
In a Fox News interview shortly after the meeting, Zelensky acknowledged it did not go well but indicated he had no plans to apologize to the US president. He stated he believed in being “very open and very honest” in bilateral relations, attributed some of his statements to translation issues, but ultimately expressed he was “unsure” if he had done anything “bad” to offend Trump.
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