President Donald Trump tore into Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after U.S. negotiators opened talks with Russia without him that are meant to find a way to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Trump blamed Zelensky for failing to head off the war inside his country, and the president said he himself was behind a push to require Ukraine to hold new elections before any peace plan can go through.
‘You have leadership now that’s allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened, even without the United States,’ Trump said from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida Tuesday – even as he said ‘I like him personally’ when speaking about Zelensky.
‘You should have ended it – three years, you should have never started it,’ he said, appearing to blame Zelensky for Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Trump offered a positive assessment when asked about the talks, saying he was ‘much more confident’ than before Tuesday’s meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and Vladimir Putin aide Yuri Ushakov. Trump said the talks were ‘very good.’
‘Russia wants to do something. They want to stop the savage barbarianism,’ Trump said, amid reports it had launched new drone attacks on Kyiv after the talks ended.
Speaking to reporters, Trump was asked if he would accept Russia’s push for new elections in Ukraine – amid fears that the Kremlin would install a pro-Moscow puppet regime. Trump indicated that he himself was for the idea.
‘We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine – I mean, I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4 per cent approval rating, and where a country has been blown to smithereens.’
Then Trump described some of the massive destruction in Ukraine, suggesting Moscow could have imposed even more if it wished.
‘You got most of the cities are laying on their sides. The buildings are collapsed. It looks like a massive demolition site. The whole – I mean, so many of the cities, I mean, they haven’t done it in Kyiv because, I guess they don’t want to shoot too many rockets in there. They’ve done it 20% but they haven’t done it 100%. If they wanted to do it 100% it would probably happen very quickly, but you have cities that are absolutely decimated.
‘And, yeah, I would say that, you know, they want a seat at the table, you could say the people have to, wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to say, like, you know, it’s been a long time since we’ve had an election?
‘That’s not a Russia thing. That’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also,’ Trump said.
Asked to respond to Ukraine being left out of the first talks, Trump instead spoke about the death toll of thousands. ‘And I think I have the power to end this war,’ he said.
Former Biden NSC spokesman Sean Savett posted on X, ‘Sounds like Trump bought Putin’s propaganda hook, line, and sinker. A reminder no one should need: Putin started the war by invading Ukraine unprovoked and his forces have committed war crimes against the Ukrainian people. Russia is the party responsible for this war continuing.’
Zelensky has demanded Ukraine be involved in any peace talks, which Trump indicated could start as soon as this month.
Trump also commented on the potential for European troops taking a peacekeeping role in the event of a ceasefire. ‘If they want to do that, that’s great. I’m all for it. If they want to do that, I think that’s that’d be fine.’ As for U.S. forces, ‘we won’t have to put any over there, because, you know, we’re very far away,’ Trump said.
That came after Lavrov blasted British PM Keir Starmer’s peacekeeping plans, saying NATO nations can’t patrol Russia’s border with Ukraine ‘under some other flag’.
‘Any appearance by armed forces under some other flag does not change anything. It is of course completely unacceptable,’ Lavrov said.
Trump dismissed complaints by Ukrainian leaders about being left out of talks about their fate. It was a sharp turnaround from the Biden Administration’s mantra of ‘no Ukraine without Ukraine’, while shipping billions in military aid.
‘And I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going very well. But today I heard, oh, well, we weren’t invited. Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it – three years, you should have never started it. You could have made a deal,’ Trump complained.
‘I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished, and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way.
Trump remarks came as the U.S. and Russia eye potential cooperation on Arctic oil drilling. Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), told Politico the two sides discussed ‘specific areas of cooperation.’
‘It was more a general discussion — maybe joint projects in the Arctic. We specifically discussed the Arctic,’ he said.
He also spoke to the New York Times about the potential for U.S. oil and gas firms to return to projects inside Russia, which ended in the years after Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine.
‘U.S. oil majors have had very successful business in Russia,’ he said. ‘We believe at some point they will be coming back, because why would they forego these opportunities that Russia gave them to have access to Russian natural resources?’