Marco Rubio: There Is 'No Change' To Providing Ukraine With Munitions That U.S. Has 'Available'

During a press briefing on Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio answered a question about the pause on sending weapons to Ukraine.

Transcript

00:00of aspects to AI as well, but this ain't one of them.

00:02You said, Secretary, that the weapons paused by the Pentagon in the narrow scope in which

00:09it occurred made sense, but was it a decision on which the State Department was consulted,

00:15or what was the level of...

00:16No, no, I said it was a review.

00:18It was a pause pending review, and so we were constantly, the Pentagon is constantly reviewing

00:25stockpiles, especially after an engagement, such as the one we had in the Middle East.

00:30So my point is that there wasn't a policy decision not to give weapons to Ukraine.

00:36It was a review in which certain munitions were temporarily paused for that review and

00:42for that purpose, and this reporting out there that there was no awareness of it is not true.

00:46Now, but no policy decision was made.

00:48In essence, no one ever said, we're not sending weapons to Ukraine.

00:51That's been appropriated by Congress, and that's continued, and that continues.

00:55It continues to this very day, but when you're doing a review, there's some period of time

01:01in which during that review, it's possible that some shipping is slowed down, not stopped,

01:07but because it's being reviewed, someone would say, okay, well, let's not send it today.

01:11Let's wait a couple days because we're conducting the review of that particular munition.

01:15So that's what happened here, and I think it was not appropriately reported initially,

01:20but nonetheless, you know, it's pretty clear now that review has occurred, and as the President's

01:26made clear, there's been no change to our posture with regards to providing what we have available.

01:31Now, I would remind everybody, again, I go back to the point I made, and that is that

01:35there are certain things that Ukraine needs, like Patriot batteries.

01:39Those are available.

01:40There are multiple countries in Europe that possess Patriot batteries that they could share

01:43with Ukraine, and we're actively, you know, talking to countries about doing that.

01:48Anyone specifically?

01:49Well, the Spaniards have one.

01:51They're really far from Ukraine, and they have one.

01:53The Germans have.

01:53Others have.

01:54I'm not signaling them out, but I'm just telling you those are two that I know.

01:57There are other Patriot batteries, and there are other opportunities.

02:00Countries that have ordered Patriot batteries that are about to receive shipments of them,

02:05it would be great if one of them volunteered to defer that shipment and send it to Ukraine instead.

02:10So we're looking for creative ways to provide them these defensive weapons that they would need.

02:15Now, that's not going to help them with the drone attacks.

02:17That's a very different technique that you use in order to bring those down,

02:20but it would help them with some of these missile attacks that we're seeing.

02:23Again, these are defensive weapons.