President Trump launched a new attack on the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him “dictator” and saying that he had done a “terrible work”.
His last salvo came after Zelensky, reacting to the American-Russian talks in Saudi Arabia from which kyiv was excluded, said that the American president “lived in a” disinformation space “governed by Moscow.
“Zelensky would be better to move quickly or he will not make him a country,” wrote Trump in an article on Truth Social.
The “dictator” insufficiency quickly aroused criticism from European leaders, notably the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who declared “it is simply false and dangerous to refuse President Zelensky his democratic legitimacy”.
German Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock described “absurd” comments.
“If you look at the real world instead of simply shooting a tweet, then you know who in Europe must live in the conditions of a dictatorship: people in Russia, people in Bélarus,” she told the diffuser ZDF.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf KrisSson also criticized the use by Trump of the word “dictator”, saying that Zelensky had been democratically elected, comments which were taken over by the British opposition chief Kemi Badenoch.
Zelensky’s five -year term had to end in May 2024. However, Ukraine has been under martial law since Russia launched its large -scale invasion in February 2022 and the elections were suspended.
A White House official said that Trump’s last article was in direct response to the comments of Zelensky’s “disinformation”.
“I love Ukraine,” wrote Trump, “but Zelensky did a terrible job, his country is broken and millions are unnecessarily died.” Meanwhile, the United States “successfully negotiated the end of the war with Russia,” he said.
Former Prime Minister of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, told BBC that Russia “was doing Champagne at the moment” in response to Trump’s comments.
“Volodymyr Zelensky is a completely legitimate president,” he said. “We cannot hold the elections under martial law.”
The War of Words began with comments made Tuesday by Trump at a press conference in Mar-A-Lago in Florida, when he Blamed Ukraine for war.
BBC News asked Trump what his message was to the Ukrainians who could feel betrayed, to which he replied: “I hear that they are upset not to have a seat, well, they have a seat for three years And a long time before that.
“You should never have started. You could have concluded an agreement,” added Trump.
Trump did not mention that President Vladimir Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.
On Wednesday, Zelensky told journalists in kyiv: “We see a lot of disinformation and it comes from Russia. With all the respect I owe you to President Donald Trump as a leader … He lives in this disinformation space. “”
He added that he believed that “the United States has helped Putin come out years of isolation”.
Zelensky also rejected Trump’s attempts to access Ukraine’s rare minerals, saying that no security guarantee had been offered in exchange.
Trump tried to make a problem with the popularity of Zelensky, saying that the Ukrainian president had only 4%approval rating. But the BBC checks the reports according to which the survey carried out this month found 57% of Ukrainians said they had trusted the president.
In the social post of the explosive truth on Wednesday, Trump also targeted Europe, saying that the war in Ukraine is “much more important for Europe than for us”.
“We have a large and magnificent ocean as separation,” he said.
Europe had “not managed to bring peace” to the region, he added.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin also spoke to journalists, saying that he would meet Trump “with pleasure”.
For its part, the EU said that it would place other sanctions against Russia.
New sanctions target Russian aluminum and dozens of ships suspected of illegally transporting oil. They would also disconnect more Russian banks from the global rapid payment system and prohibit more Russian dissemination media in Europe.
