United States President Donald Trump has called his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” as the rift between them deepens over Ukraine peace negotiations.
Trump’s latest broadside against Zelenskyy came after the Ukrainian leader challenged his claims that Ukraine had started the war. Zelenskyy had also spoken against being left out of the Russia-US talks held in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Tuesday.
In an online post later on Wednesday, and during a speech in Miami on the same day, Trump delivered scathing attacks against the Ukrainian leader, accusing him of taking US money and embroiling the country in an endless conflict.
Here’s the war of words between Trump and Zelenskyy and how it may affect the Ukraine peace initiatives:
What did Trump say about Zelenskyy?
In a Wednesday post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump wrote that Zelenskyy, a “moderately successful comedian”, has “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”.
In terms of funding disbursed to Ukraine, he added: “The United States has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe.”
Trump added that Zelenskyy “refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle’”. He said Zelenskyy had done a “terrible job” as the leader of Ukraine, deeming him “A Dictator without Elections”.
“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. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going.”
On Wednesday, onstage during the Saudi-backed Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute summit in Miami, Trump thanked Saudi Arabia for hosting talks about Ukraine which were attended by US and Russian officials.
On Tuesday, diplomats from Russia and the US held the first face-to-face talks since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago. After four hours of talks, the two sides agreed to form a team to work on ending the war – Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II. They also agreed to revive diplomatic ties, which had descended to a historic low following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Why is Trump saying this and what else has he said?
Trump’s comments came a day after Zelenskyy said that Trump was inhabiting a “Russian-made disinformation space” regarding the war in Ukraine.
“The reason that Donald Trump is doing this is that he is notoriously thin-skinned. And he is not happy about the comments that Volodymyr Zelenskyy made earlier,” said Al Jazeera’s White House correspondent, Kimberly Halkett.
On Tuesday, Trump blamed Ukraine for starting the war, saying: “Today I heard, ‘Oh, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years, you should have ended it… You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
He also asserted that Ukraine should conduct elections. He said, without evidence, that Zelenskyy had an approval rating of 4 percent.
The pushback from Zelenskyy, some analysts say, came after Trump repeated Russian talking points on the Ukraine war and excluded Kyiv from the Riyadh talks on Tuesday.
While the war of words between Trump and Zelenskyy has recently escalated against the backdrop of talks to end the Ukraine war, hostility has been brewing between the two for years.
During Trump’s first term in September 2019, he wanted Zelenskyy to work with US lawyer Rudy Giuliani in investigating political rival Democrat Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Trump alleged that Biden tried to interfere with a Ukrainian prosecutor in relation to his son. This was when it was alleged that Hunter accepted bribes from a Kyiv-based company, Burisma. Hunter pleaded guilty in the tax evasion case but was pardoned by Biden months later in December 2024.
Despite criticising the Ukrainian leader on the campaign trail, Trump met Zelenskyy months before the elections at his New York base in Trump Tower to discuss how to end the war.
What has Zelenskyy said?
“We have evidence that these figures are being discussed between America and Russia. That is, President Trump … unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Zelenskyy told Ukrainian television on Tuesday in the context of Trump’s comments about his approval rating.
The war of words between the two leaders intensified after Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin last week and agreed to hold talks with Moscow without the involvement of Kyiv and Europe.
A miffed Zelenskyy asserted that Ukraine, with European nations, needed to be represented at Riyadh talks.
Trump’s overture to Putin has stunned European leaders who believe the Russian leader cannot be trusted. They fear a Ukraine deal without them would leave Europe vulnerable to Russian aggression.
On Wednesday, Zelenskyy accused the Trump administration of bringing Moscow out of isolation. He said Russia could not be trusted.
“This isn’t positive for Ukraine. What it does is that they’re bringing Putin out of isolation, and the Russians are happy because the discussion focuses on them.”
Are Trump’s claims true?
Zelenskyy’s five-year term was due to end in May 2024, but elections have been suspended after martial law was declared following Russia’s full-scale invasion of the East European nation.
The numbers cited by Trump in terms of aid to Ukraine contradict the data collected by research institutes.
As of December 2024, European countries sent about $138bn to Ukraine, while the US sent about $120bn, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
In terms of Zelenskyy’s approval rating, at the end of 2024, 52 percent of Ukrainians said they trusted him, according to a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).
Trump’s claim that Ukraine started the war is also untrue. Russia sent troops inside Ukraine as part of what it called a “special military operation” and has since captured nearly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory.
What are the diplomatic implications?
Zelenskyy is due to meet Trump’s special envoy for the Ukraine-Russia war, Keith Kellogg, on Thursday in the capital, Kyiv.
Ukraine has sought security guarantees from its Western allies against Russian aggression in the event of a peace deal. Kellogg, who arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday, said: “We understand the need for security guarantees.”
How the public feud between Zelenskyy and Trump would affect the outcome of the talks is difficult to guess due to the US president’s unpredictable behaviour.
But US policy shift on Ukraine under Trump will impact the transatlantic ties, with European leaders scrambling for response.
What have been the reactions?
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Spiegel newspaper: “It is simply wrong and dangerous to deny President Zelenskyy democratic legitimacy.
“Volodymyr Zelenskyy is the elected head of state of Ukraine. The fact that proper elections cannot be held in the middle of a war is in line with the requirements of the Ukrainian constitution and electoral laws. No one should claim otherwise.”
United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer called Zelenskyy on Wednesday to reaffirm his support for the Ukrainian leader, a Downing Street spokesperson said, according to the BBC.
It was “perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during wartime as the UK did during World War II”, the spokesperson added.
