Donald Trump has called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” and warned that he “better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left”, in a deepening rift between Washington and Kyiv.
The US president hit out at his Ukrainian counterpart in a post on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, hours after Zelenskyy accused Trump of living in a “disinformation bubble” and disputed his $500bn bill for aid to the war-torn country.
The bitter exchange comes after Trump upended decades of US policy by convening bilateral talks with Moscow on the Ukraine war without inviting Kyiv and blaming Zelenskyy for Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Making his most overt threat yet to end the war on terms favourable to Moscow, Trump wrote: “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”
He added Zelenskyy, whom he described as “a modestly successful comedian”, had “talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won”.
“This War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation . . . [Zelenskyy] refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing [former US President Joe] Biden ‘like a fiddle’,” Trump wrote.
Speaking in Kyiv earlier on Wednesday, Zelenskyy blasted Trump for pushing “a lot of disinformation coming from Russia”.
“Unfortunately, President Trump, with all due respect for him as the leader of a nation that we respect greatly . . . is living in this disinformation bubble,” he said.
His comments were prompted by Trump’s false claim on Tuesday that Kyiv had started the conflict, the largest on European soil since the second world war.
“You should have never started it,” Trump said, speaking after Washington and Moscow agreed in their bilateral talks to “lay the groundwork for future co-operation” on ending the Ukraine war. “You could have made a deal.”
Zelenskyy also pushed back against Trump’s suggestion that elections should be held in Ukraine, after the US president claimed his Ukrainian counterpart had an approval rating of just 4 per cent.
Pointing to polling from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, which in February found 57 per cent of Ukrainians trusted their president, Zelenskyy said: “So if anyone wants to replace me right now, that will not work.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long sought regime change in Kyiv.
Trump’s comments about Zelenskyy prompted censure from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said it was “simply wrong and dangerous to deny President Zelenskyy his democratic legitimacy”.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer expressed support for Zelenskyy after a phone call between the two men, saying the Ukrainian president was a “democratically elected leader” and that it was “perfectly reasonable” to suspend elections during wartime.
In an unsubstantiated claim in his Truth Social post, Trump said: “Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING’.”
It was unclear what Trump was referring to, but the Ukrainian president has often said large chunks of promised US aid have been slow to arrive in the country.
Zelenskyy earlier disputed Trump’s previous claims that Ukraine owed the US $500bn worth of rare minerals and other resources for past military assistance.
“The US has contributed approximately $60bn so far, with an additional $31.5bn in financial assistance,” he said. “That’s $67bn in weaponry and $31.5bn in direct budgetary support.”
Kyiv has spent $320bn on its war efforts against Russia, with $200bn coming from international military assistance, Zelenskyy said.
US state department data broadly supports Zelenskyy’s figure for American military support for Ukraine.
Zelenskyy is due to hold talks with Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, on Thursday.
“It is very important for us that the meeting, and the work with America in general, is constructive,” the Ukrainian president said on Wednesday evening.
Putin said earlier on Wednesday he “highly appreciates” the US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia, which he said “made the first step to resuming our work on all sorts of issues of mutual interest”.
“The US negotiators were totally different — they were open to a negotiating process without any biases or judgments about what was done in the past,” he added, in his first public comments since a phone call with Trump that led to the Riyadh meeting. “They intend to work together.”
Putin said Russia would not “speculate” on US-European relations, but claimed EU leaders had “insulted” Trump during his election campaign and said “they are themselves at fault for what is happening”.
The Russian president said he would meet Trump “with pleasure” but any summit required substantial preparation.
Additional reporting by Lucy Fisher and George Parker in London
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