By Michael Williams, CNN
(CNN) — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should apologize after his meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office devolved into what Rubio described as a “fiasco,” while questioning whether the Ukrainian leader really wants peace in the country’s war with Russia.
In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Rubio called on Zelensky to “apologize for turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became,” after his White House meeting with Trump and Vice President JD Vance turned into a shouting match. “There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic,” he said Friday on “The Source.”
“When you start talking about that aggressively – and the president is a deal maker, he made deals his entire life – you’re not going to get people to the table,” Rubio said.
“And so you start to perceive that maybe Zelensky doesn’t want a peace deal. He says he does, but maybe he doesn’t,” Rubio added.
Rubio’s remarks underlined the serious damage that has been done to the US-Ukrainian relationship at the end of a week that also saw the leaders of the UK and France visit Washington to make the case to Trump that the US needs to mediate an end to the war that doesn’t prioritize Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interests over Zelensky’s.
America’s top diplomat spoke to CNN hours after attending the meeting, which ultimately ended absent a deal that would leverage Ukraine’s rare-earth minerals or bring Russia’s three-year war any closer to an end.
It instead saw Trump and Vance castigating the Ukrainian leader for what they saw as insufficient gratitude for the support the US has already provided for Ukraine and accusing him of over-playing his ability to negotiate.
Following the meeting, Trump ordered Zelensky to leave the White House despite a desire from Ukraine to continue the talks, scrapped a scheduled joint press conference and plunged the future of US assistance to the Ukraine war effort, along with Zelensky’s own future as a leader, into serious doubt.
Asked about comments by South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham – typically a strong supporter of Ukraine – after the meeting that Zelensky should consider resigning, Rubio responded that Trump has “taken no position on that.”
“What he said today is, ‘Let him come back when he ready to do peace.’ That’s what he said,” Rubio said. The secretary added that Trump’s position on Putin remains to “trust, but verify.”
On Friday evening, Trump said he wants “anybody that’s going to make peace” to lead Ukraine, and added that Zelensky “may or may not be” capable of achieving it.
Rubio also took issue with Zelensky’s tone toward Vance during the meeting.
After the vice president said the path toward peace and prosperity “is, maybe, engaging in diplomacy,” Zelensky responded by rattling off a series of diplomatic engagements Putin participated in before his 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about?” Zelensky asked. Vance in turn called Ukraine’s leader “disrespectful” for trying “to litigate this in front of the American media.”
Rubio said the meeting went “off the rails” after that interaction.
“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,” the secretary said.
Rubio said Zelensky is welcome back to the White House when he is “ready to make peace and he’s serious about peace.”
“How are you going to get Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation to a table to discuss even the opportunity, whether even to explore whether there’s an opportunity for peace?” Rubio said. “You’re not going to do it by calling them names.”
Rubio said it was premature to think about whether Trump, Putin and Zelensky would eventually all meet for peace talks: “There’s a lot of work to be done before we get to this point. This is a complex war that has causes behind it that go back a number of years, it is a lot to navigate. A lot has been invested on both sides.”
“Tonight, people will die in Ukraine,” Rubio said. “Tonight, people will die in this conflict. We’re trying to bring an end to this conflict, which is unsustainable. It’s an unsustainable, bloody war that has to come to an end. And right now, the only leader in the world that can even have a chance of bringing about an end to this is named President Donald Trump, and we need to give him the opportunity to try and do that.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
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