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Secretary of State Rubio: Zelenskyy should apologize for ‘wasting our time’

March 1, 2025 | | Print Article

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to apologize to President Donald Trump over the dust up that occurred in the Oval Office during what was supposed to be the signing of a mineral rights agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine.

Appearing on CNN late Friday, hours after the dust up occurred, Rubio was asked by host Kaitlan Collins whether he believes Zelenskyy “owes” Trump an apology for trying to lecture President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance about how diplomacy with Russia vis-a-vis the Ukraine-Russia war is somehow impossible.

Watch the full discussion below:

Rubio responded by arguing that based on everything that’s happened — not just during the Oval Office meeting but before it as well — the answer is clearly yes.

“I do, I do,” he said. “The president’s been very clear. He campaigned on this. He thinks this war should have never started. He believes, and I agree, that had he been president, it never would have happened. Now here we are. He’s trying to bring an end to this conflict. We’ve explained very clearly what our plan is here, which is, we want to get the Russians to a negotiating table. We want to explore whether peace is possible. They understand this.”

“They also understand that this agreement that was supposed to be signed today was supposed to be an agreement that binds America economically to Ukraine, which to me, as I’ve explained and I think the president alluded to today, is a security guarantee in its own way, because we’re involved. It’s now us, it’s our interests,” he added.

Yet despite all this being explained to Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian leader couldn’t help but keep pushing for more war with Russia on Friday.

“For the last 10 days, in every engagement we’ve had with the Ukrainians, there’s been complications in getting that point across, including the public statements that President Zelenskyy has made,” Rubio explained.

“This agreement could have been signed five days ago. But they insisted on coming to Washington, and there should have been a very clear understanding, don’t come here and create a scenario where you’re going to start lecturing us about how diplomacy isn’t going to work,” he added.

Acting as if she hadn’t heard a single word Rubio just said, Collins then asked him “what specifically do you want to see President Zelenskyy apologize for?”

“Well, apologize for turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became,” he replied. “There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic. Look, this thing went off the rails when he said, ‘let me ask you a question to the vice president, what kind of diplomacy are you talking about?’ Well, this is a serious thing. I mean, thousands of people have been killed, and he talks about all these horrible things that have happened to prisoners of war and children, all true, all bad. This is what we’re dealing with here. It needs to come to an end.”

“We are trying to bring it to an end. The way you bring it to an end is you get Russia to the table to talk. And he understands that attacking Putin, no matter how anyone may feel about him personally, forcing the president into a position where you’re trying to goad him into attacking Putin, calling him names, maximalist demands about Russia having to pay for the reconstruction, all the sorts of things that you talk about in a negotiation,” he added.

“Well, when you start talking about that aggressively, and the president’s a dealmaker, he’s made deals his entire life, you’re not going to get people to the table. And so you start to perceive that maybe Zelenskyy doesn’t want a peace deal. He says he does, but maybe he doesn’t. And that active, open undermining of efforts to bring about peace is deeply frustrating for everyone who’s been involved in communications with them leading up to today. And I think he should apologize for wasting our time for a meeting that was going to end the way it did,” Rubio concluded.

Vivek Saxena
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