President Trump is trying to force Ukraine to surrender in the war, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in an interview published on Sunday, as a deepening feud between the two leaders drives their relations to new lows.
“I believe steps have been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate,” Mr. Zelensky told Bloomberg News. He was referring to a string of measures in recent days by the Trump administration that could bolster Russia’s war machine while squeezing Ukraine’s ability to fight.
Mr. Zelensky added that he did not want to believe that Washington was seeking a quicker end to the war at Ukraine’s expense. “But that’s how it looks,” he said.
His comments capped a week in which the leaders traded some of their harshest words yet. Mr. Zelensky said that Mr. Trump had an instinctive affinity for autocrats, a pointed allusion to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, while the U.S. leader urged Ukrainians to vote Mr. Zelensky out of office.
Mr. Zelensky on Sunday appeared to tell the NBC show “Meet the Press” that he would run in a wartime presidential election, if one took place. It was the first time he suggested this publicly, after leaving the question open for months.
But he played down the prospect of holding a vote during the war. Russia has repeatedly refused a cease-fire that would allow people to cast ballots, and a vast majority of Ukrainians oppose holding elections in wartime.
The war of words between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump began on Oct. 9, when the American president announced that the United States would buy Russian diesel in an effort to bring down fuel prices before the midterm elections, a deal that could send billions of U.S. dollars into Russia’s economy. He then demanded that Kyiv stop striking Russian refineries, one of its main levers in the war, so that Russian oil could return to the market.
In a social media post on Sunday night, Mr. Trump openly sided with Russia, the aggressor in the conflict, as he explained why he was offering the Kremlin incentives to negotiate a peace deal. He attacked Mr. Zelensky, saying he “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.”
On Monday, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, could meet next month in Shenzhen, China. The statement fed fears in Ukraine that Mr. Trump, who has handed gifts to Russia even as it continues to wage war, is conspiring with Mr. Putin to impose an unfavorable settlement on Kyiv to end the war.
Kyiv has accused Washington of restricting the Ukrainian military’s access to a U.S.-provided secure satellite internet network that is important to frontline operations. Ukraine has also complained about what it has described as lapses in U.S. intelligence sharing, which provides early warnings of incoming Russian ballistic missiles.
Ukrainian officials said they received no such warnings on two occasions last week. Mr. Zelensky said it happened again on Sunday night. Ukraine, he wrote in a social media post, got “no early warning from our partners” before missiles struck Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
U.S. officials have denied halting the sharing of intelligence with Ukraine on ballistic missiles. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that the lack of warnings last week resulted from “a software problem involving their early warning system” and that he could not speak to what happened on Sunday night.
Yurii Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, confirmed that no early warning came before a first salvo of missiles struck Kyiv at 11 p.m. local time on Sunday. He noted that early warnings did arrive before the next salvo, around 3 a.m. on Monday.
Ukraine said Russia had launched 16 ballistic missiles at Kyiv and the surrounding region, along with nearly 270 drones. The Air Force said it had brought down more than 240 of the drones. It did not say whether it had shot down any of the missiles, part of a new policy not to release interception rates for ballistic missiles as Kyiv suffers from interceptor shortages.
The depletion of U.S.-made Patriot interceptors, Ukraine’s only reliable defense against Russian ballistic missiles, stems from surging global demand, most notably in the Middle East. Mr. Zelensky told Bloomberg that Washington was delaying deliveries of the interceptors.
The shortage can be heard in the way attacks now unfold. When Kyiv had enough interceptors, residents could hear the thud of air defenses firing at incoming missiles. Now, most of what they hear is the blast of missiles striking their targets, unopposed.
That was the pattern on Sunday night, too. The first salvo sent explosions reverberating across Kyiv’s city center. Then, when the attack ended, the blasts gave way to an eerie hush.
In one part of downtown Kyiv, seconds after the strike, a song rose from an apartment, filling the night. It was “How Can I Not Love You, Kyiv of Mine,” a 1962 lyrical ode to the Ukrainian capital that has become an anthem of the city’s defiance under fire.
Valerie Hopkins contributed reporting from Berlin.
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