Marco Rubio blasts Zelensky, says he should apologize for turning tense Oval Office meeting with Trump into a fiasco

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to take responsibility and apologize for turning Friday’s explosive Oval Office meeting into a “fiasco.”Rubio, who was seated feet away from the 47-year-old Ukranian leader, faulted Zelensky’s approach and accused him of antagonizing President Trump and Vice President JD Vance.“Apologize for turning this thing into the fiasco for him that it became,” Rubio told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Friday.“There was no need for him to go in there and become antagonistic.”Rubio claimed the meeting, which had been cordial for the first 45 minutes, went off the rails when Zelensky asked Vance about the lack of diplomacy in the war-torn region.Vance then accused Zelensky of “litigating” in front of the press.“This is a serious thing,” Rubio said.

“Thousands of people have been killed, and (Zelensky) talks all these horrible things that have happened to prisoners of war and children, all true all bad.This is what we are dealing with, it needs to come to an end.”Rubio, 53, laid out his vision on how talks to end the three-year war in Ukraine should be done instead of the one-on-one discussions.“The way you bring it to an end, is you get Russia to the table to talk, and (Zelensky) understands that,” Rubio said.Rubio accused Zelensky of prodding Trump and attempting to get the 78-year-old commander in chief to attack Russian President Vladimir Putin while calling for Russia to pay for reconstruction costs.“When you start talking about those things aggressively, and the president is a deal maker, you’re not gonna get people to the table,” he added.“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 that’s been involved in communications with them leading to today.”Rubio also wants Zelensky to apologize f...