The President of the United States, Donald Trump, described on Wednesday his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodimir Zelenskyy, as a ‘dictator without elections’, in a bitter exchange of words after the Ukrainian leader – who met with Erdoğan yesterday during an official visit to Turkey – said hours earlier that Trump is a victim of ‘disinformation fabricated by Russia’.
‘Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 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, but a War that he, without the U.S. and “TRUMP,” will never be able to settle,’ wrote the American president, quoted by various Ukrainian and international media outlets. In response to Trump, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha emphasised that no one can force Ukraine to surrender: ‘We will defend our right to exist,’ he responded in X.
Trump also labelled Zelenskyy on social media as ‘a dictator without elections’, referring to the fact that Ukraine has not held presidential and parliamentary elections – despite the fact that Zelenskyy’s term of office expired on 20 May 2024 – because the country has been under martial law since the invasion by Russia in February 2022. “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’, ” the US president said of the Ukrainian leader.
Zelenskyy, who met in Kiev with US envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg, said he would like the team surrounding Trump to have ‘more truth’ and information about Ukraine a day after, during a press conference with Erdoğan in Ankara, he cancelled his planned trip to Saudi Arabia and openly criticised the fact that the United States and Russia were negotiating a peace agreement behind Ukraine’s back.
Zelenskyy: ‘Trump lives in the disinformation created by Moscow’
Regarding military spending, Zelenskyy said from Kiev that the total military costs of Ukraine during the war with Russia amount to 320 billion dollars. ’We, the Ukrainians, paid 120 billion dollars, and the US and the EU together 200 billion dollars,’ said Zelenskyy after Trump went so far as to claim that US military aid totalled 500 billion dollars (it is unknown what data Trump used to get that figure) and that, as payment, Kiev in return had to agree to the US exploiting its natural resources.
In the last few hours, the Ukrainian president has also referred to other controversial statements made by Trump – who yesterday accused Zelenskyy of having started the war with Russia – in which he stated that the current Ukrainian president has an approval rating of only 4% among the population: figures that are far from those offered by the latest poll by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) published this month, which states that 57% of Ukrainians trust their president.
‘We have evidence that these figures (4%) are being discussed in the talks between the United States and Russia. In other words, they are the figures used by President Trump… Unfortunately, he is living in this disinformation space (created by Moscow),’ Zelenskyy said in a statement to a Ukrainian channel, accusing Washington of supporting the Russian propaganda that describes the Ukrainian president as an illegitimate leader who cannot be negotiated with. For Zelenskyy, Washington’s current stance ‘is helping Putin break with years of isolation’ and is supporting the Kremlin’s rhetoric of portraying Russia as a victim: ‘This is something new,’ he warned.
VOTE
EDITORIAL TEAM
🧿 About us
.
Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
…
📣 Your ADVERTISING on Hispanatolia
.
🤗 HELP US WITH A DONATION:
💗 Paypal
