U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio disputed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s account of a temporary intelligence-sharing halt, a disagreement over information Ukraine relies on to spot Russian ballistic missiles.
Reuters reported Rubio said, “There’s been no pause.” The published DOS transcript of his Oct. 19 remarks in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, does not include the reported denial.
Zelenskyy told NBC’s Meet the Press on Oct. 18 that intelligence had been blocked “for some period of time” and later restored by the U.S. side. “Now it works,” he said.
During the Samarkand briefing, a reporter asked about Ukraine’s claim that it received no warning before Russian ballistic missiles hit Kyiv the previous night. Rubio said he could not comment on that episode and referred to a software problem involving Ukraine’s early-warning system a few nights earlier, which U.S. European Command had examined. The transcript describes the software issue separately and does not connect it to the intelligence-sharing Zelenskyy discussed.
Reuters reported that Ukraine relies on U.S. intelligence to detect fast-moving Russian ballistic missiles. Earlier EconoTimes coverage of Zelenskyy’s account that the United States restored intelligence-sharing also addressed the issue.
Bloomberg News reported, citing an interview with Zelenskyy, that he was discussing with U.S. envoys a possible peace meeting as early as the week of Oct. 19.
