CNN
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President Donald Trump has now fully adopted Russia’s false propaganda on Ukraine, turning against a sovereign democracy that was invaded in favor of the invader.
Trump’s furious attacks on President Volodymyr Zelensky come after he opened talks on ending the war but excluded the nation whose territory was seized by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Tuesday, Trump wrongly accused Ukraine of starting the conflict and parroted another Moscow talking point in saying that the Ukrainian president should hold an election that was suspended because his country is in a state of war, under daily attack from Moscow’s forces.
After Zelensky hit back, accusing him of being in a “disinformation space” Trump escalated the fight on Wednesday.
In a post on his Truth Social network, Trump claimed that Zelensky “refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing former President Joe Biden “like a fiddle.” He went on “A Dictator without Elections, Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do.”
Trump’s claim that Zelensky is a dictator plays into one of Moscow’s rationales for the war — that the elected Ukrainian leader was illegitimate and Russia’s long-term hope of replacing him with a pro-Moscow head of state.
Trump’s turn against Ukraine is not just a remarkable spectacle as the United States changes sides in the middle of a war. It’s one example of Trump’s stunning transformation of US foreign policy as America becomes a nation that is rejecting the international system of alliances and friendships that it built to defend democracy and as its president seeks accommodation with authoritarians like Putin.
Trump had opened the rift on Tuesday following a high-level US-Russia meeting in Saudi Arabia on ending the war.
Zelensky pushed back Wednesday, accusing Trump of peddling Russian untruths and of rehabilitating Russia.
“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,” Zelensky said.
“I would like Trump’s team to be more truthful, all of this doesn’t affect Ukraine in a positive way. They are letting Putin out of isolation, and I think Putin and Russian are really happy because they are involved in discussions, and yesterday there were signals that they are the victims. That is something new.”
The US president’s embrace of America’s enemy Russia is worrying some Republican senators although there’s been no real institutional pushback against a position on Ukraine that is popular with Trump’s MAGA base.
One of Trump’s top supporters, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, contradicted his frequent golf partner on Wednesday, although he walked a fine political line.
”When it comes to blame for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I blame Putin above all others,” Graham wrote on X. But he also said that Biden and former President Barack Obama were “pathetically weak in handling Putin.” The South Carolina Republican added that Trump was the best hope to “end this war honorably and justly. I believe he will be successful, and he will achieve this goal in the Trump way.”
The US president’s comments will fuel fresh fears among European allies, which was also excluded from the US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia, that Trump will try to impose a peace deal in Ukraine that favors his friend in the Kremlin.
His remarks also appeared to directly contradict assurances by his own Secretary of State Marco Rubio after meeting the Russian delegation that any eventual peace agreement would be fair to all parties.
French President Emmanuel Macron was on Wednesday hosting another meeting of European and other international nations over how to handle Trump, his opening to Putin and his attacks on Ukraine.
This came a day after Trump launched his attempt to delegitimize Zelensky, who was on the phone call that led to the US president’s first impeachment in his first term.
“We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine, where we have martial law,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Trump also claimed that Zelensky’s approval rating was “at 4%” and “we have a country that has been blown to smithereens.”
Reliable polling has been difficult in the middle of a war zone that has seen thousands of Ukrainians become internally displaced or flee the country. While recent surveys have shown Zelensky’s popularity dropping significantly from the almost universal approval he enjoyed at the start of the war, it’s nowhere near the depths cited by Trump. Some recent polls have him above 50% approval — which is comparable or better than the US president’s popularity.
The president also warned that for Ukraine’s views on its fate to be considered, it should have an election, saying: “You know, they want a seat at the table, wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to have a say, like it’s been a lot of times since we’ve had an election?”
Apparently sensitive to criticism that he parrots Russian propaganda in his statements on the war, Trump insisted, “That’s not a Russia thing; that’s something that’s coming from me.”
Ukraine’s last election was due to have taken place last April, but Zelensky said it wasn’t possible for voters to go to the polls in wartime — a position that is backed up by the country’s Constitution. Trump’s insistence on voters having their say in a democracy is ironic given his own refusal to listen to the verdict of Americans in the 2020 presidential election that he lost. And it’s even more brazen since Putin has stayed in power for over two decades by holding sham elections and imposing severe domestic repression.
Trump’s latest attempt to curate American sentiment around Ukraine is similar to many of his previous efforts to fog the truth in an effort to create room for his political aspirations. The most prominent example of him doing was the 2020 election.
At Mar-a-Lago, he also tried to reinvent the facts around Russia’s invasion three years ago, when Putin’s forces rolled across the border of an independent, sovereign democracy and redrew the map of Europe.
“Today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited,’” the president said, referring to Ukraine’s complaints that it’s not been allowed to take part in the nascent peace process. “Well, you been there for three years. You should’ve ended it after three years. You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal,” he said.
In essence, the president seems to be suggesting that the Ukrainians should have made an agreement with Russia to avoid the invasion — which, in practice, would have involved submitting to a puppet government in Kyiv loyal to Moscow or simply giving up fighting to hand a win to Putin.
Trump’s response to the Saudi talks, which he said on Tuesday could be followed by an in-person meeting with Putin by the end of the month, risked redoubling what was already a victory for the Russian side. His comments are also likely to further cement opposition to his long-shot peace plans among Europeans, who his administration says must be responsible for enforcing any future agreement to stop the fighting.
Trump seemed vague about what a peace deal in Ukraine would look like, underscoring impressions that his top goal is a deal of any kind, which would allow him to claim a personal political victory but that his critics fear could foster future conflict.
He said Tuesday he’d be open to the possibility of European troops enforcing any eventual agreement – even though the idea was rejected by Moscow’s envoys at the Saudi Arabia talks. He didn’t comment on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s warning that such a force would only be viable with a US “backstop.” This followed US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s warning last week that no American troops would be involved in keeping the peace in Ukraine. Starmer is due in Washington next week to meet the president and is presenting himself as a bridge between the US and Europe.
But Trump’s enthusiasm for Putin is not shared by at least two senior Republican senators.
Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker said Tuesday that he does not think the Russian leader can be trusted. The Mississippi senator told CNN’s Manu Raju that “Putin is a war criminal and should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed.”
And Sen. John Kennedy agreed with his colleague’s acidic assessment of the Russian leader though stopped short of criticizing Trump’s approach to the peace talks. “Vladimir Putin has a black heart. He clearly has Stalin’s taste for blood,” the Louisiana senator said. Underscoring the party’s deference to Trump, however, he also rejected claims that the president had offered significant concessions to Russia simply by bringing it in from diplomatic isolation.
“I haven’t seen us take any steps to take the pressure off Putin,” he said.
This story has been updated with additional details.
