Washington voted against a UN resolution condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine because it contradicted U.S. efforts to bring both sides to the negotiating table, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Breitbart News on Feb. 24.
"We didn't feel it was conducive, frankly, to have something out there at the UN that’s antagonistic to either side," Rubio said.
He defended a separate U.S.-led resolution that avoided blaming Russia directly, calling it
"very fair language" that states that "war is a terrible thing."
Rubio's comments come after the UN General Assembly vote on Kyiv's resolution on Feb. 24, the third anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion, with 93 countries voting in favor and 18 against.
The resolution, drafted by Kyiv and supported by all EU states except Hungary, reaffirms Ukraine's territorial integrity and explicitly names Russia as the aggressor.
The U.S., Israel, Hungary, Russia, and Belarus voted against it.
On the same day, the UN Security Council passed a U.S.-drafted resolution, which calls for a swift end to the "Russia-Ukraine conflict" and avoids any criticism of Moscow's war of aggression. Out of the 15 members of the Security Council, 10 voted in favor, while the U.K., France, Denmark, Greece, and Slovenia abstained.
Suspilne earlier reported that Washington sent letters to UN member states urging them to support the softer U.S. resolution, aligning with broader U.S. efforts to tone down language on Russia in international statements.
The shift in tone comes as U.S. President Donald Trump pushes for a peace deal with Russia while increasingly criticizing Ukraine.
Trump has called President Volodymyr Zelensky a "dictator" and falsely claimed that Ukraine started the war — before later acknowledging that "Russia attacked, but they shouldn't have let him attack."
The Financial Times earlier reported that the U.S. also opposed referring to Russia as the aggressor in a G7 statement marking the war's anniversary.
Kateryna Hodunova
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