United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has denied any suspension of intelligence-sharing with Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Washington has resumed providing critical intelligence to help Kyiv defend against Russian missile strikes. Asked about a possible meeting between US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to negotiate an end to the more than four-year Ukraine war, Rubio said: “There’s been talks of a meeting. I don’t know whether it’s been finalised, but the president [Trump] has been clear.
He’d like the war in Ukraine and Russia to end.” The comments were made after Ukrainian officials said some Russian strikes had occurred without warning. Speaking to the NBC TV network’s Meet the Press programme on Sunday, Zelenskyy said intelligence-sharing had been interrupted but was later “deblocked”. Trump on Sunday defended his decision to waive some sanctions on Russia while accusing Zelenskyy of not wanting to end the war.
I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. He claimed that “Zelenskyy doesn’t care” about ending the conflict. The US president also reiterated his accusation that Ukraine was purposefully targeting Russian refineries to try to hurt Trump’s Republican Party in the November 3 midterm elections.
Polling has suggested Trump’s party is heading for a likely defeat in the elections as many voters are upset by fuel costs, which have soared since the US and Israel launched a war on Iran in late February. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spoke with Meet the Press after it aired Zelenskyy’s interview, saying the Ukrainian president “presents a false binary this morning that Ukraine must win”. Bessent slammed the claim that the US government was behind the slowing of the SpaceX satellite communications.
The attack also damaged a metro station, a medical facility, an educational institution and a nonresidential building, according to the State Emergency Service.
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