Secretary of State Marco Rubio shut down a damaging claim against America on Tuesday. Speaking to reporters in Mumbai, India, Rubio was asked about reports that the United States is holding back help from Ukraine. He did not mince words. “I saw somebody associated with the Ukrainian government say that people in Ukraine are dying because the U.S. is denying them information,” he said. “That’s scandalous. That’s outrageous. That’s just simply not true. That’s not accurate.”
Rubio said air strikes in Ukraine on the 13th and again on the 18th that were not detected had nothing to do with American intelligence. “That is not because America did not provide information,” he said. If Ukraine had trouble taking the information it was given and acting on it, “that’s possible. We’re looking at it.” But he was clear: it was “a technical matter,” not “the result of any sort of U.S. directive.” He added: “We are providing the same warnings to them now that we always have.”
Rubio said he spoke with President Volodymyr Zelensky for 45 minutes on Tuesday to set the record straight. “I’m seeing a lot of things in the media that are not accurate. So let me clear those up,” he said. Everything the Department of War has been doing with Ukraine “remains the same.” On intelligence sharing, “The President made it very clear. He’s ordered no such changes. So none of that has changed, none of it.”
On air defense, Rubio said Ukraine is far from alone in asking. “I also talked to Saudi Arabia today. They’d like interceptors. Israel would like interceptors. We would like interceptors,” he said. “It’s probably the most in-demand product right now in the defense field.” America has to protect its own bases in Europe and the Middle East first. “So there’s nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine,” he said. The good news, he added, is that American “production rate is increasing rapidly.”
Rubio said President Trump “doesn’t like to be blamed for things that aren’t true,” and that the President has said from the very beginning “that the way this war needs to end is with a negotiated deal, and he wants to make one.” President Trump made the same point Monday before leaving the White House: “We’ve given a lot to Ukraine. They’ve given nothing to us.” America First means America keeps its word, protects its own people, and stops letting others smear it.
