President Donald Trump mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a poor negotiator and “grossly incompetent” Tuesday, as tensions continued to rise over the administration’s direct talks with Russia about ending the war it launched nearly three years ago. The comments come amid criticism from European allies and many American intelligence experts that Ukraine and European nations invested in Ukraine’s defense had been excluded from negotiations that began early Tuesday between U.S. and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia. Asserting that the initial round of talks had gone “very well,” Trump bristled at Zelenskyy’s frustration over being excluded and at the Ukrainian president’s decision not to fly to Riyadh for additional talks with the U.S. delegation this week.
“Today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited,’” Trump said when asked about criticism from Ukraine, seeming to direct his response to Zelenskyy. “Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it — three years. You should have never been there. You should have never started it. You should have made a deal.” The comment — ignoring that it was Russia that invaded Ukraine without provocation three years ago this month — was Trump’s harshest condemnation to date of the Ukrainian side. It came as Zelenskyy and leaders across Europe are scrambling to respond to growing indications that Kyiv’s most critical ally for the last three years appears to be more interested in normalizing relations with Russia than in making sure Ukraine endures and that Russian President Vladimir Putin faces stronger deterrence after starting the first land war on European soil since 1945.
Trump also confirmed his interest in forcing elections in Ukraine as part of any diplomatic resolution to the war. “We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine — I mean I hate to say it, but he’s down at 4% approval rating — and the country’s been blown to smithereens,” Trump said. While Zelenskyy’s public approval rating has dropped from the early days of the war, he still has support from a narrow majority of Ukrainians — 52 percent according to a poll last month. Trump also pushed back on a question stating that forcing Zelenskyy to stand for reelection was a Russian priority.
“That’s not a Russia thing,” Trump said. “That’s something coming from me and a lot of other countries also.” The president also asserted that Ukrainians, who are fighting for their country’s survival, “are tired” of the death and destruction and eager to see the war end. “People want to see something happen.” That statement was at odds with the reality across Ukraine, where elected officials and much of the population have been shocked at the Trump administration’s actions that appear indifferent to the nation’s fate. Those include not only the talks with Moscow but also a U.S. proposal to claim half of Ukraine’s rare earth mineral rights as payment for aid already received, without future security guarantees.
