US is not deliberately hurting Ukraine, Rubio says, rejecting Zelenskyy's complaints

The United States has adopted no policy of deliberately denying military support to Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said plainly. He was responding, during a visit to India on Tuesday, to complaints by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about delayed air-defense deliveries, halted early warnings of Russian ballistic missile attacks and a slowdown in crucial Starlink services.

Rubio said the country had not changed its policy on sharing early warnings of Russian missile attacks with Ukraine and that the Pentagon was not deliberately withholding air defense missiles. 'There's nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine,' he said, calling reports that the US was not giving Ukraine early warning of Russian ballistic missile attacks 'outrageous.'

'Everything they've been doing with Ukraine remains the same,' he said of US Department of Defense policy. 'That has not changed. Nothing has changed.' Washington's position, in other words, is that no political decision has altered the pattern of military cooperation with Kyiv.

On interceptor missiles for Patriot air defense systems, however, Rubio pointed to real constraints. Ukraine's urgent appeals, he said, had to be balanced against US needs — Washington is trying to restock thanks to the war against Iran — as well as the demands of other allies.

'I know one of the things that President Zelenskyy 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. 'I also talked to Saudi Arabia today. They'd like interceptors. Israel would like interceptors. We would like interceptors. Every country in the world would like interceptors.'

A day earlier, on Monday, Zelenskyy had accused the US of holding back in a video briefing to US lawmakers. 'Unfortunately, the Pentagon is delaying the delivery of missiles that our partners have already paid for through the program PURL,' he said, referring to the NATO-led Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List program.

Zelenskyy also said the US is not always alerting Ukrainian authorities about incoming Russian ballistic missiles, attacks that have become more frequent and are killing people across Ukrainian cities.

'Unfortunately, we did not receive an early warning from our partners about the first wave of the Russian ballistic missile attack last night. And we are still facing speed restrictions on Starlink and Starshield services in various sectors of the front. The US side has not provided Ukraine with any explanations regarding either of these two issues,' Zelenskyy said in the Monday call.

An official familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said US early warning 'always worked and then suddenly it malfunctioned. Nobody in Ukraine believes in this.' According to that official, the Americans first blamed weather conditions, then a software malfunction, then something else — and provided no official explanation.

Rubio said the US was looking into why Ukraine had problems with information about Russian missiles on October 13 and 18, saying 'perhaps it was an internal issue in terms of them being able to take the information that was being provided and systemize it and react to it.'

'I think the important takeaway for you is that there has not been some deliberate political directive to go out and harm Ukraine,' Rubio said. Washington's stance, in short, is that whatever went wrong was technical or internal — not a political decision.

Ukraine also complains that Elon Musk's Starlink has throttled back speeds on its internet connections in Ukraine, making it difficult to intercept Russian drones — a dispute that underlines how central the service has become to Kyiv's war effort.

Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that he had raised the issues with Rubio. He said he was grateful for Rubio's willingness to help and his clear position, adding that the first issue was interceptors against ballistic missiles — Kyiv's most urgent need sat at the center of the discussion.

Taken together, the exchange of complaints and denials reflects the growing strain between the two allies four years into Russia's aggression. What the inquiry into the early-warning failures finds — and how fast interceptors actually move — will decide whether this distance closes on a technical explanation or widens further.