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U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky of misleading the United States into spending billions on a “war that couldn’t be won” and suggested Ukraine would struggle to negotiate peace without him.
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump criticized U.S. financial support for Kyiv, claiming Europe had contributed far less and that Washington would get “nothing back.” He also accused Zelensky of refusing to hold elections and suggested corruption was widespread in Ukraine.
“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.
According to a U.S. State Department report from January, Ukraine has received $65.9 billion in American military aid since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Another $69.2 billion in military assistance was sent in the period after Moscow first backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine and annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
In his Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump reiterated his long-standing claim that only he could broker an end to the war with Russia, writing that “Biden never tried” and that European efforts to secure peace had failed.
“He [Zelensky] refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle,’” Trump said. “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”
Presidential elections were supposed to be held in Ukraine in May of last year. However, the country’s constitution prohibits elections from being organized during martial law, which went into effect after Russia invaded in 2022.
On Tuesday, Trump suggested that Ukraine instigated the war with Russia and claimed that Zelensky had a 4% approval rating in his country. However, according to February polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, the Ukrainian president has an approval rating of 57%.
Zelensky later hit back against Trump’s accusations, suggesting that the U.S. president was under the influence of Russian disinformation.
The quickly growing rift between Trump and Zelensky comes as Washington moves to drastically reshape its stance on the Ukraine war, prioritizing direct negotiations with Moscow over deliberations with Ukraine and its European allies.
On Tuesday, U.S. and Russian officials met for their first direct talks since the February 2022 invasion, with delegates from both sides striking a positive tone while downplaying the chances of an immediate breakthrough in Ukraine peace negotiations.
