Washington denies any pause

Marco Rubio said on Monday, 19 October, that the United States had not paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Speaking to reporters in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he had arrived on Sunday night for meetings with senior officials of the C5+1 group, which brings together the United States and five Central Asian states, he said he did not know where Volodymyr Zelensky got such claims or why he shared them with the press. Rubio suggested reporters ask the Ukrainian president himself, and said there had been no pause at all. He then urged Kyiv to focus on ending the war, which he said nobody is winning, and said Russia should focus on the same goal.

Zelensky made his claim on Sunday, 18 October, in an interview with NBC's Meet the Press. He said the sharing had been blocked for a time, then unblocked by the American side, and he thanked Washington for it. Zelensky put the interruption at three days, during Russian ballistic missile attacks, and said the system now works. Ukrainian officials also said some Russian strikes had come without warning, which raised doubts about whether intelligence was flowing normally, even as Trump said at the start of this week that Washington kept providing it.

Starlink access and a software problem

Zelensky also said Washington had intentionally restricted access to Starlink, the satellite internet network owned by Elon Musk, and that SpaceX had suddenly limited how fast Starlink terminals could operate in Ukraine. He framed the moves as a message in Trump's dispute with him, and said they hurt drone operations on the front line and some air defence missions. Rubio gave a different account of Ukraine's position. He said Kyiv appeared to want to expand how Starshield, a military satellite system linked to Starlink, is used, so it could carry out strikes beyond Ukrainian territory, and confirmed that talks on that point were under way. He also said a software problem had been detected in Ukraine's early warning system a few days earlier and was being analysed by US European Command (EUCOM).

Sanctions and the peace track

On Friday, 16 October, Trump issued a presidential decree exempting Russia from new US sanctions for 60 days. A deal that would let the United States import Russian diesel had been announced a few days before that. Rubio defended the exemptions as a way to buy time and see whether the talks could lead to something positive. Asked about doubts over whether Vladimir Putin is genuinely open to negotiating, he said the matter was diplomacy, not a criminal case. On Sunday, 18 October, Trump accused Zelensky of not wanting to end the war with Russia. Trump also argued that signing the Graham law on new sanctions would cause Moscow to withdraw from the negotiations, and he linked Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries to higher fuel prices worldwide. Fuel prices are one of the main issues in the US midterm elections on 3 November.

Timeline of the row

The dates below are the ones the articles give for each step, ending with Rubio's denial on Monday, 19 October.

Rubio said he would not respond to every statement Zelensky makes in interviews, or to every statement from Russian officials, while the 60-day sanctions exemption remains in place.