QUESTION: And my source tonight is the Secretary of State, who was in that room today, Marco Rubio. Thank you so much, Secretary Rubio, for being here. We just heard from President Zelenskyy. He said he does not think that he owes President Trump an apology for what happened inside the Oval Office today. Do you feel otherwise?
SECRETARY RUBIO: I do. I do. Because you guys don't see - you guys only saw the end. You saw what happened today. You don't see all the things that led up to this, so let me explain. The President's been very clear; he campaigned on this. He thinks this war should have never started. He believes - and I agree - that had he been president it never would have happened. Now here we are. He's trying to bring an end to this conflict. We've explained very clearly what our plan is here, which is we want to get the Russians to a negotiating table. We want to explore whether peace is possible. They understand this. They also understand that this agreement that was supposed to be signed today was supposed to be an agreement that binds America economically to Ukraine, which, to me, as I've explained and I think the President alluded to today, is a security guarantee in its own way because we're involved; it's now us, it's our interests.
That was all explained. That was all understood. And nonetheless, for the last 10 days in every engagement we've had with the Ukrainians there's been complications in getting that point across, including the public statements that President Zelenskyy has made. But they insisted on coming to D.C. This agreement could have been signed five days ago, but they insisted on coming to Washington and there was a very - and should have been a very clear understanding: Don't come here and create a scenario where you're going to start lecturing us about how diplomacy isn't going to work. President Zelenskyy took it in that direction and it ended in a predictable outcome as a result. It's unfortunate. That wasn't supposed to be this way, but that's the path he chose, and I think, frankly, sends his country backwards in regards to achieving peace, which is what President Trump wants at the end of the day - is for this war to end. He's been as consistent as anyone can be about what his objective is here.
QUESTION: But what specifically do you want to see President Zelenskyy apologize for?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, 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. You were there, I believe. It went off the rails when he said: Let me ask you a question - to the Vice President - what kind of diplomacy are you talking about? Well, these - this is a serious thing. I mean, thousands of people have been killed - thousands - and he talks about all these horrible things that have happened to prisoners of war and children. All true, all bad. This is what we're dealing with here. It needs to come to an end. We are trying to bring it to an end.
The way you bring it to an end is you get Russia to the table to talk, and he understands that. Attacking Putin, no matter how anyone may feel about him personally, forcing the President into a position where you're trying to goad him into attacking Putin, calling him names, maximalist demands about Russia having to pay for the reconstruction - all the sorts of things that you talk about in a negotiation. Well, 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. And so you start to perceive that maybe Zelenskyy doesn't want a peace deal. He says he does, but maybe he doesn't. And that act of 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 —
QUESTION: But can I ask you —
SECRETARY RUBIO: — for wasting our time for a meeting that was going to end the way it did.
QUESTION: You yourself have said previously that Putin cannot be trusted in negotiations. That was the point that President Zelenskyy was ultimately making during that conversation, is that there cannot be an agreement without security guarantees, because he was talking about all the ceasefire agreements before or agreements that Putin has just blown past. I mean, do you still feel that way, that Putin cannot be trusted in these negotiations?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, I was there yesterday when the President said in front of the media that our approach is going to be trust but verify. Donald Trump has made - President Trump's made deals his entire life. He's not going to get suckered into some deal that's not a real deal. We all understand this. We understand it on our end for certain. And so the goal here is to get to a place - we have to explore whether peace is possible. I've said this repeatedly. I don't know; I think it is based on what they've said so far. But we have to explore that.
How else is this war going to end? I ask people: What is the European plan to end this war? I can tell you what one foreign minister told me, and I'm not going to say who it was but I can tell you what one of them told me, and that is that the war goes on for another year and at that point Russia will feel so weakened that they'll beg for peace. That's another year of killing, another year of dying, another year of destruction, and by the way, not a very realistic plan in my point of view.
So if there's a chance at peace, even if it's a 1 percent chance, that needs to be explored - and that's what President Trump is trying to do here.
QUESTION: President Trump said just when he was leaving the White House after that meeting that he doesn't think President Zelenskyy wants peace. But isn't that why the Ukrainian leader was in the Oval Office for that meeting today?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, he was in the Oval Office to sign a minerals rights deal. That's what he was in the Oval Office to sign today. But again, when you have comments that deliberately - appear to be deliberately - I mean, after having discussed this repeatedly, deliberately appear to be geared towards making the argument that peace is not possible. Again, I turn to the - he turns to the Vice President: What kind of diplomacy are you talking about? Almost as if to say, these people, you can't deal with them; we can't - you can't have any negotiations with Putin because he can't be trusted and you're just wasting your time on negotiations. Well, he's directly, basically, undermining everything the President has told him he's trying to do.
Look, there's no need for that. You start to suspect, does he really want an end to this war? Does he just think that we have to do whatever he says and give him anything he wants without any end game? That was the Biden strategy. That was the Biden strategy. We were funding a stalemate. We were funding a meatgrinder. And unfortunately for the Ukrainians, the Russians have more meat to grind, and they don't care about human life. We've seen it - human waves, the North Koreans, et cetera. And so this is a very complex thing, it's very delicate, it's very costly, it's very bloody. It needs to be brought to and end. But it isn't going to be brought to an end with public pronouncements and maximalist demands in the public, but in real diplomacy. The Vice President was right.
QUESTION: When you say they don't care about life, you - are you talking about the Russians or the Ukrainians?
SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, the Russians. I mean, they're conscripting by the hundreds of thousands. They've brought in —
QUESTION: Okay, I just —
SECRETARY RUBIO: — North Korean troops that were slaughtered in Kursk, and they keep going because they've got more people. That's the other fact. Look, and it's - again, we go back to the same point. I'm not going to fall into this trap of who's bad and who's evil. People can make those conclusions. People have seen how this narrative has played out and where we are today and how this all started and so forth. The point now is it has to end, and the way it ends is you get people to a negotiating table. And the President, who's the ultimate deal maker, knows you don't get people to a negotiating table when you're calling them names and you're accusing them of things. Because at the end of the day this is not a political campaign, okay? This is high-stakes international diplomacy and an effort to bring about an end to a very, very dangerous war.
QUESTION: But you yourself, sir, have said before that you believe Putin is a war criminal, that that is a widely accepted fact. You've called him a butcher, and you've said that as the Secretary of State you do believe it's important for someone with such global influence as you have to speak with that kind of moral clarity.
SECRETARY RUBIO: Yeah, and at this moment as Secretary of State, my job working for the President is to deliver peace, to end this conflict and end this war. Ultimately, that is the job of the State Department. The State Department doesn't fight wars, it ends them. It tries to end them. And that's usually, by the way, celebrated. I mean, throughout history I've watched presidents that bring about an end to wars and conflicts, and people celebrate that. They applaud it. I think we should be very proud and happy that we have a President whose prime objective is not to get into wars but to prevent wars and to get out of wars. That is a very noble, laudable goal. Everyone should be applauding it, and he should be given the space to do that - not undermined by demands that he call Putin names or that we say things that impede the ability to conduct real diplomacy, as the Vice President said today.
