Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hit back at U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying the American president is trapped in a “disinformation bubble” following Trump’s comments that Ukraine started its war with Russia.
Zelenskyy’s response comes less than 24 hours after Trump made surprising comments Tuesday that Ukraine was responsible for Russia’s invasion, adding that Kyiv could have made a deal to avoid a war.
“You should have never started it,” Trump said of Ukraine. “I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going very well. But today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years.”
Trump added: “I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished, and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way.”
Trump also lied and claimed Zelenskyy was unpopular in Ukraine, saying only 4% support him. However, an opinion poll released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology shows that 57% of Ukrainians trust Zelenskyy.
“As we are talking about 4%, we have seen this disinformation, we understand it’s coming from Russia,” Zelenskyy said at a news conference in Kyiv Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Zelensky added.
He also said any attempts to replace him during the war — which Trump suggested — would fail.
“The army is quite resilient, and it is the most resilient in Europe … and it guarantees us the opportunity to speak with dignity and on an equal footing with other partners — allies or non-allies,” Zelenskyy said.
The U.S. and Russian officials held high-level talks on ending the war in Ukraine in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Tuesday. Hours later, Trump would make comments that Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov suggested the Kremlin was pleased with.
Trump is, “the first, and so far, apparently, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the brazen path of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO,” Lavrov said.
