Thursday, February 20, 2025 - The simmering feud between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump escalated on Wednesday when the US president mocked his counterpart in a post filled with falsehoods, calling him a “dictator without elections.”
His comments came hours after Zelensky said the American leader had been
“caught in a web of disinformation” from Russia over the war in Ukraine.
The pointed exchange was set off by a meeting of American and Russian
officials to open talks on ending the war in Ukraine that excluded the
Ukrainian government. After that meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Trump
suggested that Ukraine had started the war, a comment that brought a strong
rebuttal from Mr Zelensky on Wednesday morning.
“I would like to have more truth with the Trump team,” Zelensky said in
some of the most overt criticism yet of Trump and his view of the war in
Ukraine.
Zelensky, summoning reporters to his presidential office in Kyiv, a
building still fortified with sandbags, said that the U.S. president was living
in a “web of disinformation.”
In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump responded with a scathing
attack on Zelensky.
“Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy,
talked the United States of America into spending 350 Billion Dollars, to go
into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he,
without the U.S. and “TRUMP,” will never be able to settle,” Trump wrote.
As he did in making his assertions a day earlier, Trump lied. The United
States, for instance, has allocated $119 billion for aid to Ukraine, according
to a research organization in Germany, the Kiel Institute, not $350 billion.
Trump also suggested that the future security of Ukraine would not be an
American problem. “This War is far more important to Europe than it is to us,”
he wrote.
“We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation.”
The feud threatens to undermine Ukraine’s war effort and further weaken
its position in the peace talks that have already started between the U.S. and
Russia notably without Kyiv’s involvement.
Trump’s fixation on the United States being repaid for military and
financial assistance over three years of war could put a stop to any future aid
package to the war-torn country. Ukraine has long been dependent on regular
American deliveries of air-defence weapons, shells and another type of
ammunition to sustain its fight against Russia.
“Let’s be honest: Without the U.S., it will be very difficult for us,”
Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, said
on Wednesday.
Kyiv has pushed for a seat at the negotiating table with Russia. But
Trump’s portrayal of Moscow as a willing partner in peace talks, and his
dismissal of Mr. Zelensky as an illegitimate and ineffective leader, risks
further sidelining Ukraine.
In his social media post-Wednesday, Mr. Trump said that Zelensky had
“better move fast” to secure peace “or he is not going to have a Country left.”
His comments followed up similarly accusatory statements he made on
Tuesday. Trump said Ukraine “should have never started” the war, and appeared
to embrace what has been a Russian demand that Ukraine hold elections as a
necessary step in the settlement talks. Elections were suspended under
martial law after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
Trump also said that Zelensky’s approval rating was 4 percent. Zelensky
said that was not true, citing polls showing far higher support. In one
conducted in December by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, for
example, 52 percent of Ukrainians said that they trusted his leadership.
“So, if anyone wants to replace me right now — that’s not going to
happen,” Zelensky said, referring to his approval ratings.
Trump’s false statements, Zelensky said, stemmed from misinformation
spread by people around him. “Such rhetoric doesn’t help Ukraine — it only
helps in bringing Putin out of isolation,” he said.
At the news conference Wednesday, Zelensky was focused and spoke with
intensity. He said he was not personally ruffled by the negotiations with the
Trump administration. “This is not my first dialogue or fight,” he said. “I
take it calmly.”
Russia, he said, is clearly pleased with the turn of diplomatic
developments. “I think Putin and the Russians are very happy because questions
are discussed with them,” Mr. Zelensky said.
“Yesterday, there were signals of speaking with them as victims,” he
said of the Trump officials’ tone toward the Russians, whose government set off
the largest war in Europe since World War II, one that has killed or wounded
about a million people on both sides. “That is something new.”
Ukrainians, Mr. Zelensky said, are not likely to trust promises Russian
negotiators offer in talks. “Nobody in Ukraine trusts Putin,” he said.
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