Mumbai, Oct 20 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday said his country has not changed its policy in terms of weapons aid or intelligence sharing towards Ukraine while noting that President Donald Trump is “frustrated and angry” over untrue accusations.
Rubio, who landed in Mumbai this afternoon at the start of a three-day India visit, told reporters that the US wants to end this war because of mounting loss of life and the risk of the conflict spreading to other places.
Stressing that the US has not changed its policy in terms of weapons aid or intelligence sharing with regard to Ukraine, Rubio said there has not been any deliberate political directive to go out and harm Ukraine. “This is just not accurate,” he added.
“The President made it very clear, and there are no such changes. So none of that has changed. And I see reporting that it has, which is not accurate,” the top US diplomat said.
He said the President (Trump) is responding to the insinuation that somehow he is doing things to deliberately harm Ukraine, which is not fair and not true.
“But he is most certainly angry and frustrated at the lack of progress in those negotiations,” he added.
Rubio said many countries had requested missile interceptors from the US, which is the “most in-demand product” right now in the defence field.
“When a country doesn’t get interceptors from the United States, it’s not because we’re denying. We have our own. We have minimum standards that we have to meet internally in our base presence all over the world.
“We have a global defence footprint, and many of our installations around the world are part of defence, air defence. So there’s nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine,” Rubio said.
Referring to the Russian attack on Ukraine on October 13 and 18, Rubio said the air strikes were not detected.
“That is not because America did not provide information. I saw somebody associated with the Ukrainian government say that people in Ukraine are dying because the US is denying them information. That’s scandalous. That’s outrageous; that’s simply not true. That’s not accurate,” he said.
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv again received no early warning of the attack from partner countries that previously shared their intelligence.
Rubio added that there was a problem identifying that; perhaps there was an internal issue in terms of them being able to take the information that was being provided, systematise it, and react to it. “That’s possible. We are looking at it,” he said.
“Our understanding is that, to the extent that happened on the 13th and on the 18th (October), it was a technical matter. It was not the result of any sort of US directive not to provide advance warning of a strike. And we are providing the same warnings to them now that we always have,” he said.
Rubio said President Trump is “frustrated” because, first of all, he doesn’t like to be blamed for things that aren’t true, including accusations that somehow he had ordered intelligence sharing to be cut off.
He said the President understands, and has said consistently from the very beginning, that the way the Russia-Ukraine war needs to end is a negotiated deal, and he wants to make one. And he wants both sides to come to an agreement.
“And so I certainly, but I think the President, more than anything, is responding to the insinuation that somehow he is doing things to deliberately harm Ukraine, which is not fair and not true. But he is most certainly angry and frustrated at the lack of progress in those negotiations. After having dedicated almost two years to it now,” Rubio added.
Regarding a fuel shortage in the world amid the West Asia crisis, Rubio said there is a “diesel problem” in terms of access to affordable diesel that so much of their economies are powered by.
He said there are multiple countries around the world that are facing a very dangerous situation.
“So, of course, we are concerned about what this right is, which is one of the reasons why this war needs to end, among others. One of the reasons why this war needs to end is because too many people are dying.
“One of the reasons why this war needs to end is because Ukraine’s electric grid is being devastated. One of the reasons this war needs to end is because every month, 20 to 25,000 Russians are slaughtered as they try to advance in Ukraine. All of these are bad things,” the US Secretary of State added.
Rubio stressed that the US is trying to bring both parties to a place where this war can end in a negotiated way, because right now, as it currently stands, not only will more people continue to die, but more things will continue to be destroyed.
“But there is a very real risk, there is a real risk here of escalation of it spreading to some other place,” Rubio added.
(PTI News)
