MIAMI – US President Donald Trump called Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator” on Feb 19, widening a personal rift with major implications for efforts to end the conflict triggered by Russia’s invasion three years ago.
The United States had provided funding and arms to Ukraine, but in an abrupt policy shift since coming to power, Mr Trump has opened talks with Moscow.
“A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform of the Ukrainian leader, whose five-year term expired in 2024.
Martial law introduced following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 bans any wartime elections.
The Constitution says the president serves until a newly elected one takes office.
On Feb 18, Mr Trump held a press conference in which he criticised Mr Zelensky, repeated several Kremlin narratives about the conflict and called for an end to the war.
Mr Zelensky in turn accused Mr Trump of succumbing to Russian “disinformation” – including Mr Trump blaming of Kyiv for having “started” the war and echoing Kremlin questions over Mr Zelensky’s legitimacy.
“He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing (Joe) Biden ‘like a fiddle’,” said Mr Trump in hisTruth Social post of Mr Zelensky.
“In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do,” the president added.
Later on Feb 19, Mr Trump doubled down on his criticism of Mr Zelensky, telling a conference in Florida that the Ukrainian leader done a terrible job and could have come to talks with Russia in Saudi Arabia if he had wanted to.
Mr Trump said he hoped for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine soon.
Mr Zelensky was elected in 2019 for a five-year term, but has remained leader under martial law imposed following the Russian invasion.
His popularity has eroded, but the percentage of Ukrainians who trust him has never dipped below 50 per cent since the conflict started, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).
Mr Trump’s invective drew shock from Europe where German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was “wrong and dangerous” to call Mr Zelensky a dictator.
‘Doublethink’
Mr Trump has long held his party in lockstep, but moderate Republicans swiftly pushed back against his attack on Mr Zelensky on Feb 19.
“Putin started this war. Putin committed war crimes. Putin is the dictator who murdered his opponents. The EU nations have contributed more to Ukraine. Zelensky polls over 50%. Ukraine wants to be part of the West, Putin hates the West,” congressman Don Bacon, from Nebraska, wrote on X.
“I don’t accept George Orwell’s doublethink,” he added, referring to the author of the dystopian novel, 1984.
New York Republican Mike Lawler said that Russian leader Vladimir Putin demanding elections in Ukraine was “both comical and self-serving.”
“Vladimir Putin is a vile dictator and thug, who has worked in a concerted effort with China and Iran to undermine and destabilise the United States, Europe, Israel, and the free world. He is not our friend, nor our ally,” he wrote, also on X.
Mr Trump’s staunch ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, threaded the needle carefully, writing that he blames Mr Putin “above all others” for the war – but adding on X that he still saw the US president as Ukraine’s “best hope.”
Former vice-president Mike Pence, who broke with Mr Trump after his supporters stormed the US Capitol in 2021 in a bid to overturn his 2020 election loss to former US president Joe Biden, also issued a rare public rebuke.
“Mr President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives,” he wrote on X.
Moscow buoyed
Moscow has been buoyed by the Feb 18 talks in Saudi Arabia and Mr Trump’s attacks on Mr Zelensky.
The talks “made the first step to restore work in various areas of mutual interests,” Mr Putin told journalists while visiting a drone manufacturing plant in his native Saint Petersburg.
Kyiv was not invited to the Riyadh talks as Moscow and Washington moved to sideline both Ukraine and Europe.
Mr Putin said that the United States’ allies “only have themselves to blame for what’s happening,” suggesting they were paying the price for opposing Mr Trump’s return to the White House.
Tensions between Mr Zelensky and Mr Trump over the new US position on the war had been building for weeks, before bursting into the open.
But Mr Zelensky sought to take a positive approach ahead of meeting Mr Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Mr Keith Kellogg, in Kyiv on Feb 20.
“It is very important for us that the meeting and our work with America in general be constructive,” Mr Zelensky said, while adding, “it is a choice for everyone in the world – and for the powerful – to be with Putin or with peace.”
Russia, which for years has railed against the US military presence in Europe, wants a reorganisation of the continent’s security framework as part of any deal to end the Ukraine fighting.
Mr Putin on Feb 19 said that Russia and the United States needed to work with each other if talks were to be successful.
“It is impossible to solve many issues, including the Ukrainian crisis, without increasing the level of trust between Russia and the United States,” he said. AFP
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