Trump Calls Zelensky ‘A Dictator,’ Blaming Ukraine For War With Russia

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump claimed that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is a “dictator” and “if he isn’t careful, he won’t have a country left.”

The incendiary comments come just a day after Trump called Zelensky a “poor negotiator,” saying it’s his fault that he is being left out of peace negotiations with Russia. Trump said Zelensky “should have never started” the war, blaming him for the war with Russia. 

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 after massing troops on the border and demanding a ban on Ukraine from joining the NATO alliance. 

Trump has drastically reshaped the U.S. stance on the Ukraine war, focusing on direct negotiations with Moscow rather than Ukraine and its European allies. After the two spoke on the phone, Trump hinted at a potential meeting with Russian President Vladamir Putin. On Tuesday, addressing reporters, Trump signed executive orders at his Mar-a-Lago Resort in Florida. 

“I think I have the power to end this war. And I think it’s going very well,” Trump told reporters. “But today I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should’ve ended it in three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them 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.”

In a Truth Social post, Trump condemned U.S. financial support for Kyiv. He claimed Europe had contributed far less and that Washington would get “nothing back.” 

“A modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘TRUMP,’ will never be able to settle,” Trump wrote.

“He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle,'” Trump continued on Truth Social the next morning. “A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left.”

A presidential election was supposed to be held in Ukraine in May 2024. However, the country’s constitution does not allow elections to be held during martial law, which has been in effect since Russia invaded in 2022. 

Zelensky protested Trump’s remarks in a Wednesday morning conference, saying that Trump is living in a “disinformation space” created by Russia and is repeating Russian propaganda by blaming Ukraine for the war.