Rubio dismisses criticism of posting photo from a Zoom call with Ukrainian president
Sen. Marco Rubio has shrugged off criticism over his decision this weekend to share a screenshot of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on a video call with U.S. lawmakers.
Zelensky reportedly has survived multiple assassination attempts since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began late last month, according to The Times of London.
Rubio, Florida’s senior senator and the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, posted a screenshot to Twitter Saturday of a Zoom call with Zelensky. In the image, Zelensky is sitting at a desk next to a Ukrainian flag in a white room.
Rubio’s tweet and a similar post from Sen. Steve Daines, a Republican from Montana, drew swift condemnation from Democrats on the call who said lawmakers were specifically asked by Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, not to share any material from the call while it was ongoing to protect Zelensky’s safety.
“The Ukrainian ambassador very intentionally asked each of us on the zoom to NOT share anything on social media during the meeting to protect the security of President Zelenskyy. Appalling and reckless ignorance by two US Senators,” Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat who serves on the House Committee of Foreign Affairs, said on Twitter in response to Rubio, using an alternative spelling of the Ukrainian leader’s last name.
Rubio’s likely opponent in November, Democratic Rep. Val Demings, also weighed in from her campaign account. “I can’t believe I need to say this, but real leaders put our allies ahead of their own self-importance,” Demings said.
The Florida Democratic Party similarly criticized Rubio, saying in a statement that he “is more concerned with showing off for his Twitter followers than protecting our allies.”
Rubio’s office rejected the criticism when contacted Saturday by the Herald.
“There were over 160 members of Congress on a widely reported Zoom call. There was no identifying information of any kind. Anybody pretending this tweet is a security concern is a partisan seeking clicks,” a Rubio spokesperson said in a statement, which did not directly address the request by the Ukrainian ambassador to withhold information during the call.
Rubio acknowledged the request the following day during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, but he said it came after he’’d already posted the image to social media. He maintained that he had not done anything untoward by sharing the image, which remains online as of Monday morning.
“First of all, she asked that 30 minutes into the call, after I had already done it. Second, I think she was under the impression that no one knew that call was happening,” Rubio told Tapper. “That call had been widely reported and the specific time had been reported. There were over 300 people on it, all the call details had been emailed. There was nothing secure about that call.”
Florida’s other senator, Republican Rick Scott, was also on the call and was reportedly asked at one point to mute his microphone by Zelensky, according to a report from The Financial Times.
Scott did not post any images from the call, but he released a statement following its conclusion calling for the U.S. and other NATO countries to supply weapons and other resources to Ukraine. The statement also called for U.S. credit card companies to terminate service to Russia and Belarus, the neighboring country that has allowed Russia to use its borders as a staging ground for the invasion.
“This is not extreme, it is what is needed to further cut off these tyrants. The other regimes that have the same goals as Putin — especially Communist China — need to see how we will react to their plan to dominate the globe. Any business that chooses to do business with Russia or Belarus right now is siding with evil. Freedom is under attack in Europe right now; no amount of profit is worth supporting this war,” Scott said in the joint statement with Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.
This story was originally published March 7, 2022 at 12:04 PM with the headline "Rubio dismisses criticism of posting photo from a Zoom call with Ukrainian president."
