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President Donald Trump appeared on Wednesday to throw America’s lot completely in with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the three-year-old war the Russian leader started against Ukraine by issuing a bizarre social media threat against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and accusing him of continuing the war against Moscow as a way to soak American taxpayers.
In a post on his Truth Social website, Trump accused Zelensky, who he called a “modestly successful comedian” in a reference to his previous career as a sitcom star and entertainer, of having “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.”
He also claimed Zelensky — who recent opinion polls show as holding support from a majority of Ukrainians — “refuses to have Elections” and falsely accused the Ukrainian leader of being “very low” in polls. He went on to accuse Zelensky of having “played” former president Joe Biden “like a fiddle” for military assistance funds approved by the U.S. Congress over the last three years.
“A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” Trump wrote.
The president continued by suggesting that he and his team are currently “successfully negotiating an end” to the war, a reference to his recent decision to capitulate to the Russian dictator by opening talks for a settlement to the war without Zelensky’s involvement.
He then accused the Ukrainian leader of wanting to continue fighting off the unprovoked invasion of his country to “keep the ‘gravy train’” of American aid going.
“I love Ukraine, but Zelensky has done a terrible job, his country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died,” Trump added.
The American leader’s comments on Wednesday seemed to continue a wholesale shift in U.S. policy from being a staunch ally of Ukraine’s democratically-elected government and against the unprovoked war Russia launched in 2022 — a continuation of an invasion that began in 2014 with the illegal annexation of Crimea — to an ally of Russia’s dictator-led government.
They also appeared to be in part a reaction to criticism of Trump by Zelensky, who reacted to Trump falsely blaming his government for the war by suggesting that the American leader was «living in a disinformation space» created by Russia.
Trump had previously falsely accused Zelensky of holding approval ratings around 4 percent and has frequently boosted Russian propaganda lines about Ukraine, including by repeatedly suggesting that the invasion by Moscow was the fault of Kyiv for wanting to align further with the west by joining NATO rather than a war of aggression started by Putin with the aim of reclaiming control over territory lost during the collapse of the Soviet Union.
During a media availability at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Wednesday, Trump suggested that Kyiv could lose more American support if Zelensky does not lift the state of martial law he declared to respond to Russia’s 2022 invasion and hold new elections — elections that Russia could manipulate to install a pro-Kremlin puppet government.
He also mocked Ukrainian concerns over being left out of purported peace talks between Russian and American representatives in Riyadh — the first high-level, face-to-face contact between the two governments since the start of the war — a move that reversed years of American policy which held that no talks about ending the war in Ukraine would be held without involving the Ukrainian government.
«Well, they’ve had a seat for three years and a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal,” he said.
In fact, it was Russia that started the war by invading Ukrainian territory with the aim of toppling Kyiv’s pro-western government. And despite Trump’s claims that Zelensky is a “dictator,” it is Putin who has spent nearly 30 years as Russia’s head of state, a period during which he has consolidated power and turned the nominal democracy founded in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse into an autocracy with periodic sham elections with only token opposition allowed to participate.
Trump’s comments were immediately met with harsh condemnation from the top Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
In a statement, Schumer called Trump’s claim that it was Zelensky who’d started the war “disgusting” and a deliberate distortion of the truth.
“It’s just awful to see an American president turn against one of our friends and openly side with a thug like Vladimir Putin.It is shameful to hear the president repeat Putin’s propaganda while laying the groundwork for negotiations that favor Russia at Ukraine’s expense,” he said.
Schumer also noted that abandoning Ukraine would have long-term, negative consequences for America based on the commonly-held view among historians that appeasing dictators almost always results in further aggression.
“When you give in to thugs, when you give in to dictators, you pay the price. Hasn’t Donald Trump and his allies learned the lessons of history?This is not just about the security of another nation – this struggle is in every way about the ultimate security of the American people,” he said.
He added that Moscow is likely “overjoyed by what Donald Trump is saying and what he’s doing” with respect to Ukraine and Zelensky, and said his Republican colleagues “must be put on the record for President Trump’s dangerous and false statements about the war in Ukraine.”
Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, also had harsh words for his former boss in a post on X (formerly Twitter) in which he called the president’s comments “some of the most shameful remarks ever made by a U.S. President.”
And his former vice president, Mike Pence, was equally condemning of the man with whom he served from 2017 to 2021, writing on X: “Mr. President, Ukraine did not “start” this war.”
“Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth,” he added.
