WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to reassure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that US support for Ukraine remains intact during a 45-minute call Tuesday. The conversation came amid growing tension between Kyiv and Washington over alleged interruptions in intelligence sharing and reported limits on Ukraine’s access to the Starshield satellite network.
Rubio said “nothing has changed” in the Trump administration’s approach to Ukraine, adding that he used the call to correct what he described as inaccurate media reports.
“Look, I’m seeing a lot of things in the media that are not accurate, so let me clear those up as I did in my conversation with him,” Rubio told reporters in India.
“[With] the Department of War, everything they’ve been doing with Ukraine remains the same. That has not changed,” he said. “The second is intelligence-sharing. The president made it very clear he’s ordered no such changes.”
The dispute over intelligence surfaced shortly after President Trump’s Oct. 9 phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the announcement of a diesel deal with the Kremlin. Ukrainian officials said they had stopped receiving US warnings about Russian ballistic missile attacks aimed at civilian areas.
Trump had also sharply criticized Ukraine over its retaliatory strikes against Russian energy infrastructure, prompting speculation that Washington might be scaling back assistance to its war-torn ally.
Zelensky said publicly that Russian forces had launched ballistic missile attacks against Ukraine three times the previous week without advance notice from US intelligence. Rubio rejected the suggestion that the warnings had been withheld for political reasons, saying the problem was caused by technical failures.
“I saw somebody associated with the Ukrainian government say that people in Ukraine are dying because the US is denying them information,” the secretary said. “That’s scandalous, that’s outrageous. That’s just simply not true.”
“Our understanding is that to the extent that happened on the 13th and on the 18th, it was a technical matter,” he added. “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.”
Rubio said Trump is “frustrated” because “he doesn’t like to be blamed for things that aren’t true.”
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During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet The Press” over the weekend, Zelensky said US intelligence on Russian ballistic missile attacks is considerably more advanced than the information available to European governments.
Ukrainian officials have also alleged that access to SpaceX’s Starshield satellite internet network was throttled from speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour, disrupting drone operations. The Trump administration and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have both denied that the slowdown was intentional.
The main focus of Zelensky’s call with Rubio, however, was Ukraine’s urgent request for additional missile interceptors. Kyiv reportedly exhausted its supply of Patriot missiles last year.
“[What] President Zelensky has been talking about is that he’s been trying to buy interceptors, and I understand so does every other country in the world,” Rubio said. “It’s probably the most in-demand product right now in the defense field.
“So when a country doesn’t get interceptors from the United States, it’s not because we’re denying. We have our own needs,” he added. “There’s nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine.”
Zelensky thanked Rubio for the conversation and said the two officials planned to speak again.
The call took place before Zelensky’s scheduled meeting in Oslo, Norway, with Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff and European allies. The gathering is expected to mark another round of peace negotiations focused on ending the war. Witkoff is then expected to travel to Russia to present Putin with a new proposal.
Another special envoy, Jared Kushner, is believed to have contracted the flu and is not expected to attend the meeting in person.
