Donald Trump’s comments come after Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed surprise at being excluded from talks between top US and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, ITV News International Editor Emma Murphy explains
US President Donald Trump has called Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator and repeated false claims that Ukraine started the war.
In a lengthy post shared on Truth Social and X Trump said Zelenskyy had refused to hold elections in Ukraine and accused him of being a “dictator without elections”.
The US president went on to say: “Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.”
He also touted his administration’s recent negotiations with Russia saying: “We are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP’, and the Trump Administration, can do.”
After Trump made the accusation Downing Street said Sir Keir Starmer called Zelenskyy to express support for “Ukraine’s democratically elected leader.”
A Downing Street spokesperson said it was “perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time as the UK did during World War Two”.
Trump repeated his Truth Social comments at a Saudi-backed event in Miami on Wednesday night calling Zelenskyy, ” A dictator without elections, Zelinsky better move fast, or he’s not going to have a country left”.
Trump went on to suggest Zelenskyy should have turned up uninvited to Saudi Arabia for the US-Russia talks and said, “There’s never been even meetings or phone calls to stop this war.”
Trump has been saying similar things for days and earlier on Wednesday Zelenskyy accused the US president of “living in a disinformation space” a day after Trump falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, the Ukrainian president pushed back on several unfounded claims Trump made on Tuesday.
Zelenskyy and Trump in 2024.
Credit: AP
Trump said that Zelenskyy’s rating stood at 4% and suggested he was open to pushing for new elections in Ukraine. Trump has not said where he got this figure.
Although polling is sparse in Ukraine at the moment but a survey by the Kyiv Insitute of Sociology published on January 7 found that 57% of Ukrainians approved of the president.
Zelenskyy was elected president in 2019 for a term that was due to end in Mat 2024 but elections have been suspended since the start of the war, which is a power the government has under the constitution.
Responding to Trump’s earlier claims on Wednesday Zelenskyy said they have “seen this disinformation” and understand “that it is coming from Russia”.
He continued: “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.”