Ukraine‘s President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused President Trump of living in a “disinformation space,” after the US leader appeared to suggest his war-torn country was responsible for starting the conflict with Russia.
“We are seeing a lot of disinformation and that is coming from Russia,” he told reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday.
“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 was speaking following the cancellation of his planned trip to Saudi Arabia, the site of peace talks between the US and Russia on Tuesday — which went ahead without the presence of a delegation from Ukraine.
Zelensky’s decision not to fly to the Middle East has been seen by many as a response to some of the comments Trump made on Tuesday in which he appeared to suggest Ukraine was at fault for starting the conflict that has raged in the country since February 2022.
“Today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve 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,” Trump told reporters from Mar-a-Lago following the talks, which saw a series of agreements made between Trump’s team and their Russian counterparts.
“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 this way.”
Speaking from Florida, Trump also claimed that Zelensky’s approval rating had dropped to 4%, which doesn’t line up with domestic polling in Ukraine suggesting his current approval rating is over 50%.
On Wednesday, Trump’s special envoy, Keith Kellogg, arrived in Kyiv, pledging to “sit and listen” to Zelensky and his team, just days before the third anniversary of the conflict.
Trump has repeatedly called for an end to the war as soon as possible, even if that requires Ukraine ceding further territory to Russia.
A fresh presidential election in Ukraine has been reported as one possible condition of the peace talks.
Last week, Trump held a 90-minute phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin before speaking to Zelensky, with a Kremlin spokesperson suggesting that the pair might meet face to face as soon as this month.
Putin on Tuesday praised the talks with the US as “friendly,” as he appeared to criticize the previous approach of the Biden administration.
“There were completely different people on the American side, who were open to the negotiation process without any bias, without any condemnation of what had been done in the past,” Putin told reporters in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
On Tuesday, Zelensky said Ukraine was unhappy with being excluded from the talks, adding that the US had “helped Putin out of his long isolation.”
He has appeared to offer a more conciliatory tone in recent weeks since Trump re-entered the White House, implying that Ukraine may be open to some form of territorial losses to Russia in exchange for peace.
However, he has said his country must be involved in negotiations, and that there must be guarantees from its allies of Ukrainian sovereignty and security.
“We understand the need for security guarantees,” Kellogg told Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne Novyny on Wednesday following his arrival in Kyiv.
“It’s very clear to us the importance of the sovereignty of this nation and the independence of this nation as well.”
