US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should apologize after his meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office devolved into what Rubio described as a “fiasco”.

Axar.az reports Rubio stated this in an exclusive interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.

According to him Donald Trump has 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 Zelensky 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 Zelensky 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."

The U.S. Secretary of State emphasized that Vladimir Zelensky should apologize for turning this matter into a fiasco:

"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 Zelensky 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."