Friday’s talks in the Oval Office descended into a verbal spat during which the US president accused the Ukrainian leader of ungratefulness
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky “should apologize” for turning his meeting with US President Donald Trump into a “fiasco,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said. In an interview with CNN on Friday, Rubio slammed Zelensky for “wasting” everyone’s time with his attitude and questioned his true intentions regarding the conflict with Russia.
Zelensky, Trump, and Vice President J.D. Vance met earlier on Friday in the White House Oval Office for what was expected to be the formal signing of a minerals agreement between Washington and Kiev. However, the meeting descended into a verbal spat after Trump told Zelensky that he would have to negotiate peace with Russia. Zelensky argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot be trusted and insisted that the US should continue supporting his country, prompting Trump to accuse him of ungratefulness and an unwillingness to negotiate an end to the conflict.
“[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,” Rubio said, commenting on the meeting.
“There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic,” he added, criticizing the Ukrainian leader for the talks “going off the rails.” Rubio also accused Zelensky of sticking to his animosity towards Putin instead of focusing on the only viable path towards peace, which he said was getting Russia to the negotiation table.
“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,” he stated, noting that Zelensky’s attitude could be viewed as “active open undermining” of efforts to bring about the end of the conflict.
Following the meeting, Fox News journalist Jacqui Heinrich wrote on X that the Ukrainian delegation was “begging” for a reset, but was asked to leave the White House grounds and only return when Zelensky was “ready for peace.”
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In an interview on Fox News shortly after the meeting, Zelensky admitted it did not go well, but signaled he did not plan to apologize to the US leader. He claimed he thought “we have to be very open and very honest” in bilateral interaction, blamed some of the statements he made on being lost in translation, but ultimately said he was “unsure” that he did something “bad” to offend Trump.
