Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has found himself exactly where he does not want to be: In a war of words with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Trump addressed complaints on Tuesday coming from Ukraine about it being left out of recent peace talks with Russia while addressing reporters at Mar-a-Lago. A brought up Russia’s insistence that Ukraine hold new elections for president to potentially sign a new peace deal and asked whether Trump would support this idea.
“Well, 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 hate to say it, but he's down at 4% approval rating, and where a country has been blown to smithereens,” the president replied.
Trump referred to the damage Ukraine sustained after Russia’s invasion began in 2022. “You have cities that are absolutely decimated,” he said, comparing it to the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s war against terrorist group Hamas.
The president asserted that the Ukrainian people “are tired of it” and that they “want to see something happen.” He criticized Zelenskyy over reports suggesting he could not locate half of the financial aid the U.S. had sent Ukraine.
I believe President Zelenskyy said last week that he doesn't know where half of the money is that we gave him. Well, we gave them, I believe, $350 billion. But let's say it's something less than that, but it's a lot.
The president slammed Ukraine for complaining about not being included in the Russia peace talks.
“But today I heard, ‘Oh, we weren't invited.’ Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it three years ago,” Trump said. “You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. 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."
Present Trump drops the hammer on Zelensky. They are upset they weren’t invited to the talks -so where have they been the last three years? Where’s the missing money? Yes, they should have elections. Why is the country under martial law- Boom 💥 pic.twitter.com/CWDNzY7Uu3
— Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 (@KarluskaP) February 18, 2025
Zelenskyy countered Trump’s comments during a Wednesday press conference, referring to reports that he has four percent approval from Ukrainians as “disinformation.”
The president added that his Ukrainian counterpart's approval ratings sat at 4% in Ukraine — despite an opinion poll released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showing that 57% of Ukrainians trust Zelenskyy.
“As we are talking about 4%, we have seen this disinformation, we understand it’s coming from Russia,” Zelenskyy told a news conference in Kyiv on Wednesday, as he dismissed Trump’s claim.
He added that any attempts to replace him during the war would fail — Trump raised the question of Ukrainian elections following Russian President Vladimir Putin's repeated assertions that Zelenskyy is not Ukraine's legitimate leader — contending that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians would not support concessions to Russia.
“The army is quite resilient, and it is the most resilient in Europe ... and it guarantees us the opportunity to speak with dignity and on an equal footing with other partners — allies or non-allies,” Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy stated that Trump is being misled by disinformation. “Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” he said, saying he “would like Trump’s team to be more truthful” because “all of this definitely doesn’t affect Ukraine in a positive way.”
The Ukrainian president also criticized Washington’s demands that his country should give the U.S. over $500 billion in minerals, saying it was “not a serious conversation” and asserted that he would not sell his country in exchange for aid.
Trump doubled down on his comments on Wednesday in a post on Truth Social where he called Zelenskyy a “modestly successful comedian” who “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 further noted that the U.S. “has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe” while getting “nothing back.”
He continued: “Why didn’t Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation. On top of this, Zelensnkyy admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING.’ He 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 further warned that Zelenskyy “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”
U.S. and Russian officials began meeting in Saudi Arabia to establish a foundation for future peace talks to end the war in Ukraine. Trump also had a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war.
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