U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Ukraine on Monday of striking ships carrying American-owned energy products in the Black Sea. In an interview with Breitbart, Rubio said numerous American companies had complained about the attacks. “We don’t need anything that’s going to make the global energy crisis worse,” he emphasized.
1+Following the incidents, Rubio called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to find a way to end the war. “Zelensky needs to be focused on bringing an end to this war,” he said. At the same time, Rubio denied Zelensky’s claims that the Trump administration has stopped intelligence sharing, saying: “I don’t know where he’s getting this stuff.”
Rubio’s accusations come against a backdrop of rising tensions between Washington and Kyiv. President Donald Trump recently announced imports of diesel fuel from Russia to ease prices at home. Meanwhile, Trump is negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war and has halted new sanctions on Moscow.
1+In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that “great progress is being made” in negotiations. He accused Zelensky of “using diesel refineries in Russia as targets, knowing these attacks severely hurt global diesel markets, including those in the United States.”
On the Ukrainian side, officials claim their access to the Starlink satellite system has been restricted, preventing their air defense systems from responding to Iranian-made drones launched by Russia. Zelensky stressed in an interview with NBC that American intelligence on Russian missile launches is “unique and irreplaceable,” and claimed that information has not been received.
Rubio assessed that “nobody is winning this war,” now focused in the Donetsk region. According to him, the U.S. remains ready and willing to play a mediating role if there’s an opportunity to end the war through a political settlement. “That’s how we think this war will ultimately end,” he said.