Secretary of State Marco Rubio is demanding an apology from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after Friday's Oval Office fireworks and heated exchange. Trump had sarcastically quipped the whole scene will make for "great television" before he shut it down and kicked Zelensky out of the White House, prior to a planned lunch.
Rubio told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that the Ukrainian leader should "apologize for turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became. There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic. Look, this thing went off the rails."
"When you start talking about that aggressively, and the President’s a deal maker. He’s made deals his entire life, you’re not going to get people to the table," the US top diplomat added.
Many sources say that before the blow-up which started when Zelensky specifically called out Vance to 'answer' a question (after which the vice president appropriately unleashed on Zelensky), a final minerals deal was all but assured and ready to be signed.
But Rubio in his Saturday comments said he's unsure whether Zelensky actually wants to see any kind of peace agreement at all.
"And so you start to perceive that maybe Zelensky 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," Rubio explained.
Zelensky just prior to these fresh remarks of Rubio's expressed what perhaps came close to regret, but something far short of an apology...
"No, I respect the president, and I respect the American people and if, I don’t know, I think that we have to be very open and very honest and I’m not sure that we did something bad," Zelensky responded when asked by Fox News’s Bret Baier if he would apologize for the meeting.
"This is not good for both sides, anyway, and I was very open, but I can’t change our Ukrainian attitude toward Russia," he said.
Still, on the same day Zelensky issued a very lengthy thread on X, at over a dozen full posts, which many will see as reeking of desperation.
He wrote that he knows that the US is on 'our' side and that "America’s help has been vital in helping us survive, and I want to acknowledge that." This appears a response to Vance the day prior noting that he had not once said "thank you" during Friday's meetings. "Peace can only come when we know we have security guarantees, when our army is strong, and our partners are with us," Zelensky also said.
"It will be difficult without the U.S. support. But we can’t lose our will, our freedom, or our people. We’ve seen how Russians came to our homes and killed many people," he continued in the long message.
At one point he further expressed: "I want the U.S. to stand more firmly on our side. This is not just a war between our two countries; Russia brought this war onto our territory and into our homes."
And again, more after-the-fact efforts to salvage that disaster of an Oval Office meeting: "Our relationship with the American President is more than just two leaders; it’s a historic and solid bond between our peoples. That’s why I always begin with words of gratitude from our nation to the American nation."
...though that's not what President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance are saying. All of this from Zelensky is likely too little, too late.
Below is Zelensky's full thread on X...