Donald Trump appears to blame Ukraine for the war with Russia and said Kiev should hold elections, his first public remarks after the U.S. held high-level talks with Riyadh and Moscow.
Russia and the United States agreed on Tuesday to “lay the foundation for future cooperation” in ending war and normalizing relations, since the full-scale invasion of President Vladimir Putin.
The discussion follows Trump’s efforts to call Putin last week to end the war, as Washington accelerates an extraordinary shift in Russian policy without consulting Ukraine or its European allies.
Trump, in his comments at his reporters at the Margrago resort in Florida, falsely claimed that the conflict began in Kiev, the largest conflict on European land since World War II, adding that he was ruthlessly accused of Ukraine felt “dissatisfied” and he was “very disappointed” to sit down in the negotiations.
“I heard today: ‘Oh, well, we didn’t invite’.” “Okay, you’ve been there for three years. . . You should never start it. You could have reached an agreement. ”
The full-scale war began with Putin ordering his troops to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022. But Russia’s military aggression began in 2014, with the armed conflict in Moscow’s forced annexation of Crimea and the eastern Tobas region under the guise of a separatist uprising.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he did not inform him of talks about Riyadh in advance, adding that Ukraine would reject any solution that would not directly involve Kiev.
“This is only the first month,” said an EU diplomat.
“We have been in the Ukrainian election for a long time,” Trump said in further comments on Zelenskyy.
“That’s not Russia’s business. This is what I came from, from many other countries,” he added.
However, his comments are very similar to the Kremlin’s previous remarks, which questioned the legitimacy of Zelenskyy.
According to Ukrainian and Western intelligence agencies, one of the core goals of Russia’s war with Ukraine is the change of regime.
Ukrainian officials said that the Financial Times intelligence in the early stages of the war showed that Moscow wanted to install Putin’s close friend, Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, who was the leader if there was a plan to invade.
Putin questioned Zelenskyy’s legitimacy after its expiration in May 2024, but Kyiv said elections can only be held after combat is stopped and martial law is in place.
On Tuesday, Trump claimed that Zelenskyy’s approval rate was 4%. However, a poll conducted by the Kiev International Sociology Institute in February found that 57% of Ukrainians trust their president, up from 52% in December.
KIIS executive director Anton Hrushevsky said the findings show that Zelenskyy “maintained a fairly high trust in society. . And, retaining legitimacy.”
On Wednesday, Trump’s envoy against Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, arrived in Kiev and told Ukrainian public broadcasters that he would “listen” and bring what he heard back to Trump.
“We want to listen. We understand the need for security assurance,” he said. “For us, the importance of sovereignty in this country is obvious. . Part of my mission is to sit down and listen.”
There is widespread fear in Kyiv and throughout Europe, and Trump wants to resolve the war according to Putin’s terms. The United States seems to have made important concessions to Putin by brushing Ukraine’s accession to NATO and restoring control of the land occupied by Russia.
Holding elections would be a huge challenge for Ukraine as millions of citizens are displaced, living abroad or living in areas occupied by Russia. Kyiv also expressed security concerns about any polls.
A survey of Ukrainians conducted by the nonprofit International Republican Institute in September and October found that 60% of respondents opposed the presidential vote during the war.
David Arakhamia, head of the ruling party of the Zelenskyy parliament, said this month that the election should not be held six months after the end of martial law.
A spokesman for Putin said on Wednesday that the Ukrainian election “cannot be held in Moscow or Washington.”
At an emergency meeting in Paris on Monday, European leaders clashed with a ceasefire sending peacekeeping forces to Ukraine. Despite the UK’s proposal to put “boots on the ground”, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain have expressed their reluctance to do so.
Trump said on Tuesday that he would support Ukraine’s European peacekeeping force after the war, although Lavrov said on Tuesday that any European peacekeeping deployment in the country would be “unacceptable”.
Trump said the United States does not have to donate to Ukraine’s peacekeeping operations because “we are far away”, but added that he did not want to withdraw all U.S. troops from Europe as part of the peace deal.
European Council President António Costa made a one-on-one call with all EU leaders on Wednesday to assess the additional support they are willing to provide to Ukraine.
Discussions include possible peacekeeping force deployments and move towards higher collective defense spending, officials said.
French President Emmanuel Macron held his second emergency meeting on Wednesday, with European NATO members not attending the initial meeting on Monday, Canada.
One person introducing the preparations said the afternoon meeting was a mixture of virtual and face-to-face attendance and would seek to “assert that there is an Euro-Atlantic Group” whose interests must take into account these preparations, adding that it is also about the preparations. the person. “Keep Trump’s attention.”
Other reports by James Politi in Washington and Henry Foy of Brussels
