Online Reporter
The simmering feud between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump escalated on Wednesday when Mr Trump mocked his counterpart in a post, calling him a “dictator without elections.”
His comments came hours after Mr 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. After that meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Mr. 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,” Mr Zelensky said in some of the most overt criticism yet of Mr. Trump and his view of the war in Ukraine.
Mr 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, Mr Trump responded with a scathing attack on Mr. 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,” Mr Trump wrote.
Mr Trump also suggested that 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.”
Mr. Trump’s fixation on the United States’ being repaid for military and financial assistance over three years of war could put a stop on any future aid package to the war-torn country. Ukraine has long been dependent on regular American deliveries of air-defense weapons, shells and other 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 Mr. 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 in a menacing tone that Mr. 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. Mr. 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. – New York Times.
