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US President Donald Trump called Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky “a dictator,” escalating a public war of words between the two leaders that started when Trump falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia
Trump’s accusation, posted on his social media network Truth Social, came just hours after Zelensky accused him of repeating Russian disinformation.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, Zelensky pushed back on several unfounded claims the US president made on Tuesday, while reinforcing Ukraine’s position that a deal to end the war needed its involvement.
“Unfortunately, President Trump, I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us unfortunately live in this disinformation space,” Zelensky said.
Trump has made it clear he wants the war to end as soon as possible even if it means further territorial losses for Ukraine. And much to the horror of Kyiv and its allies, Trump has at times adopted the Kremlin’s narrative and blamed Ukraine and NATO for the conflict, even saying that Ukraine “may be Russian some day.”
But Trump’s boosting of Russia goes well beyond rhetoric. The president raised many eyebrows last week when opting to hold a 90-minute phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin before speaking to Zelensky.
Then on Tuesday, US and Russian officials held high-level talks on ending the war in Ukraine in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, excluding Kyiv from the meeting.
Putin praised this new US attitude towards his country. Speaking about the talks in Riyadh, Putin said he was told the atmosphere was “friendly.”
“There were completely different people on the American side, who were open to the negotiation process without any bias, without any condemnation of what had been done in the past,” Putin added.
The US and Russia agreed in Riyadh to appoint high-level teams to negotiate the end of the war and said they were working to reestablish diplomatic channels.
Zelensky reiterated on Tuesday Ukraine was not happy with the exclusion, saying that while any country has the right to discuss bilateral issues with Saudi Arabia, the fact that the US held direct talks with Russia “helped Putin out of his long isolation.”
The US was one of Ukraine’s closest allies under the Biden administration, providing the country with tens of billions worth of military aid. But Trump has made it clear that he thinks the US should no longer send aid to Ukraine without getting anything in return.
Earlier this month, he suggested the US should get access to Ukraine’s mineral richest in exchange for future aid. Zelensky said on Tuesday that the US has asked Ukraine to “give away” 50% of its rare minerals, without offering any security guarantees in exchange. He said he rejected that idea, saying, “I cannot, I cannot sell our state.”
Kyiv’s initial complaint about being shut out of the talks sparked Trump’s comments on Tuesday.
Speaking late on Tuesday, Trump said, “Today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should’ve ended it after three years. You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal.”
The claim that Ukraine somehow started the war has long been repeated by the Kremlin and its supporters. The conflict began in 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula, and began sponsoring pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Moscow then launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, attacking Ukrainian cities and sending special forces into Kyiv to assassinate Zelensky.
But Trump did not stop at questioning who started the war in Ukraine. Repeating another line often pushed by the Kremlin, Trump appeared to question Zelensky’s legitimacy.
“We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort, incorrectly claiming that Zelensky’s approval rating was “at 4%.”
Zelensky won more than 73% of the vote in the second round of the 2019 presidential election.
While his mandate was meant to end last May, a new election was not held because Ukraine has been under martial law since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of the country. The martial law prohibits elections.
Speaking on Wednesday, Zelensky specifically said the claim that his approval rating was at 4% comes from Russia, and that Kyiv has some evidence that the numbers were discussed between the US and Russia.
He referred to a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) earlier this month which showed that while his popularity dropped significantly since the early days of the war, his approval rate has never dropped below 50% and currently stands at 57%.
Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation Mykhailo Fedorov went even further, pointing out on Telegram that Zelensky’s current approval ratings are higher than those of Trump.
Trump and Zelensky’s relationship has been fraught since Trump’s first term in office when he pressured Zelensky to investigate his political rival Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in a phone call. That call led to Trump’s first impeachment.
Trump’s comments sparked outrage across Ukraine, with some people saying the US president is not to be trusted.
Trump’s comments were well received in Moscow, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov praising the US president for echoing the Kremlin’s narrative, telling the Russian parliament, the Duma, that Trump seemingly “understands our position.”
“Trump, I think, is the first Western leader to publicly and openly say that the cause of the Ukrainian conflict was the efforts of the previous administration to expand NATO,” Lavrov told lawmakers on Wednesday. “No Western leader has actually said that before. So that is already a signal that he understands our position.”
At the same time, Russia continues its brutal assault on Ukraine, inching ahead along the eastern frontlines and attacking from the air.
Moscow launched a massive drone attack against multiple Ukrainian cities on Tuesday, just hours before the meeting in Riyadh. Despite the assault, the talks went ahead as planned.
Russia has long argued that the eastward expansion of NATO put its security under threat, falsely claiming that NATO leaders promised Russia that the defensive alliance would not enlarge after the end of the Cold War. NATO has always had an open door policy with any European state welcomed to join as long as it meets the entry criteria.
Ukraine deepened its cooperation with NATO after Russia first started attacking it in 2014.
Putin used the NATO argument to justify his invasion of Ukraine, even claiming, falsely, that NATO troops were fighting in Ukraine.
Erizia Rubyjeana
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