Watch a different Marco Rubio hail US vow to defend Ukraine after it surrendered its nuclear weapons

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox

Get our free Inside Washington email

Get our free Inside Washington email

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the Trump administration should do just about anything to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table to reach a deal on the Ukraine War — even though Putin has reportedly already been talking to Donald Trump for weeks without Ukraine.

Now the Trump administration has halted military aid to Ukraine, and Rubio has called for an apology from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after a heated While House clash Friday during which Zelensky was berated by Trump.

Just over a decade ago Rubio spoke passionately about America’s moral imperative to defend Ukraine against aggression after the nation gave up up its nuclear stockpile following the fall of the Soviet Union.

At the time of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. The nation surrendered its nuclear warheads as the U.S., Britain and Russia agreed in the Budapest Memorandum to protect the country against aggression, which Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly violated when he ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

But Russia also violated the memo in early 2014 when it invaded the Crimean Peninsula, which was part of Ukraine, and annexed it. The Western failure that time to defend a country that had voluntarily given up it nuclear arsenal triggered an incensed Rubio, whose angry comments are captured in the video below

“What kind of lesson do you think this instance sends” to the people of Ukraine? asked a frustrated Rubio. “I think the message being sent to many nations around the world is perhaps we can no longer count on the security promises of the free world.”

On Sunday Rubio was angry again as he defended the Trump administration’s cooperation with ... Russia.

“The only thing that matters is getting Putin to negotiate,” a testy Rubio told host George Stephanopoulos Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

“The only way it ends is if Vladimir Putin comes to a negotiating table. And right now President Trump is the only person on Earth who has any chance whatsoever of bringing him to a table to see what it is he would be willing to end the war on,” said Rubio.

On Monday Trump halted military aid to Ukraine and Vice President JD Vance said that only the U.S. and Russia are now in peace talks, which do not involve the nation Russia invaded.