United States President Donald Trump has escalated his feud with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling the Ukrainian president a “dictator without elections”.
In a lengthy and scathing post on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump also accused Zelenskyy of taking US money and embroiling the country in an endless conflict.
“Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 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,” Trump, a former reality TV star, wrote.
The US president continued by insinuating that Zelenskyy had ulterior motives for wanting Ukraine to continue fighting for its territory.
“Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going,” Trump said, using an idiom that suggests the Ukraine is receiving easy money.
The social media post marked Trump’s most barbed rhetoric yet towards the Ukrainian president, a US ally, as he seeks to repel a full-scale Russian invasion that began in February 2022.
But Trump’s overall posture has become increasingly hostile towards Zelenskyy, as he and his government draw closer to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Already, European allies have responded with outrage over Trump’s latest remarks, saying his comments are detrimental to the peace process.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for instance, responded forcefully against the allegations that Zelenskyy was a “dictator” for not holding elections in wartime.
“It is simply wrong and dangerous to deny President Zelenskyy democratic legitimacy,” Scholz told the newspaper Spiegel shortly after Trump’s post.
“Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the elected head of state of Ukraine. The fact that proper elections cannot be held in the middle of a war is in line with the requirements of the Ukrainian constitution and electoral laws. No one should claim otherwise.”
A trend of increasing hostility
The war in Ukraine will reach its third anniversary on February 24, with no clear end in sight.
But upon taking office last month on January 20, Trump promised to be a “peacemaker and unifier”, implying he could bring global conflicts to a swift conclusion.
On February 12, he made a surprise announcement on social media: He had just concluded a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with President Putin and had agreed to “start negotiations immediately” to end the war in Ukraine.
The announcement came on the heels of a prisoner exchange between the US and Russia, and at first, Zelenskyy expressed optimism about the dialogue.
But within hours, the mood had soured, with Zelenskyy and his European allies accusing the US of cutting them out of the peace negotiations altogether.
This week, US officials travelled to Saudi Arabia to meet Russian officials for the first high-level talks between the two countries since Russia’s full-scale invasion began. No Ukrainian or European representatives took part in the dialogue.
Trump and Putin have also confirmed plans to visit one another’s countries in the coming months.
Meanwhile, Trump and his officials have been pressuring Ukraine to make concessions.
Last week, for instance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told a meeting of European allies that it was an “illusionary goal” for Ukraine to seek the return of all its territory dating back to 2014, when Russia invaded the peninsula of Crimea.
“We will only end this devastating war and establish a durable peace by coupling allied strength with a realistic assessment of the battlefield,” Hegseth said.
“We want, like you, a sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. But we must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective.”
Trump echoed those sentiments himself, and on Tuesday, he accused Zelenskyy of initiating the invasion himself.
“You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine,” Trump said in remarks from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
He also argued that Zelenskyy only has himself to blame for being excluded from the peace negotiations.
“Today, I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it,” Trump said.
International community responds
Russia has long argued its full-scale invasion of Ukraine was necessary to protect civilians and prevent the country from joining the NATO alliance.
Putin and his allies have referred to a Cold War-era comment from a US official saying that NATO would expand “not one inch” eastward, though no such policy was ever formalised or written down.
But Ukraine and its European allies have denounced the invasion as an unprovoked act of aggression, one that reflects Putin’s territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe.
On Tuesday, in the wake of Trump’s latest social media post, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock argued that the only real dictatorship was in Russia.
“If you look at the real world instead of just firing off a tweet, then you know who in Europe has to live in the conditions of a dictatorship,” she said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha also responded to Trump’s pressure, writing on social media: “Nobody can force Ukraine to give up. We will defend our right to exist.”
Al Jazeera correspondent Kimberly Halkett said that Trump’s latest comments on Zelenskyy were an example of his “classic bullying” tactics.
“He’s really trying to diminish the Ukrainian leader by referring to his previous occupation: that he was a comedian before he became the leader of Ukraine,” she said.
Under the tenure of former President Joe Biden, the US stood firmly by Ukraine, including by sending the war-torn country billions of dollars in military equipment and aid.
But Halkett warned that Trump’s latest remarks signal a “stunning reversal” of US policy.
“What the Biden administration did previously was isolate Russia,” she said. “Now, the Trump administration is doing the exact opposite.”
But in his post on Tuesday, Trump accused Zelenskyy of playing Biden “like a fiddle”. He cast himself as uniquely able to secure peace for Ukraine.
“We are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do,” the US president wrote.
He also offered some ominous words to his Ukrainian counterpart. “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”
Zelenskyy has warned that it would be “very, very, very difficult” for Ukraine to survive Russia’s continuing assault without US support, and he has called for a united US-Europe front against the aggression.
In his own social media post on Tuesday, Zelenskyy reiterated his position that Putin was not to be trusted — and urged Europe and the US to work together to seek a resolution to the war.
“We cannot allow Putin to deceive everyone again,” Zelenskyy wrote. “Before any potential negotiations, all partners must clearly understand that strong security guarantees are the priority for lasting peace.”
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