Donald Trump’s statement that Kyiv “started” the war Russia launched on Ukraine has left Europeans dumbstruck, with one British government aide simply responding, “Jesus.”
On Tuesday night, the U.S. president claimed that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a poor negotiator, saying it’s his fault that his country — which Russia has been attacking for a decade now, including a full-scale invasion in 2022 — is being left out of negotiations over a potential peace deal.
“Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it — three years. You should have never been there. You should have never started it. You should have made a deal,” Trump said. The U.S. president also reiterated his interest in forcing Ukraine to hold elections as part of a deal to end the war.
But this would be in Russia’s best interest, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said Wednesday. “Putin doesn’t want elections in Ukraine because he cherishes Ukrainian democracy. He wants elections to weaken Ukraine under the current state of emergency. We must not fall into that trap,” Stenergard told Swedish outlet Aftonbladet on Wednesday.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius also lashed out at the U.S. for barring Ukraine from joining NATO. “The Americans made a mistake,” Pistorius said in an interview with public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk, adding that concessions like that weaken negotiating positions against Russia. “The Americans seem to take the Europeans less seriously when it comes to geopolitical issues.”
But in the United Kingdom, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged European leaders not to take Trump’s blaming of the Ukrainians for their country being invaded too literally. “Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action,” he said.
After U.S. and Russian war negotiators met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, European and other world leaders are holding a second emergency summit in Paris on Wednesday as pressure grows to forge a cohesive response to Trump’s divisive plan to end the war in Ukraine.
Elena Giordano, Noah Keate and Stefan Boscia contributed to this report.
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