New Delhi: US President Donald Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections” in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. He also claimed that Ukraine started the war, setting off an unprecedented escalation between Kiev and Washington that puts US aid to Ukraine under a cloud.
The long post came after Zelenskyy accused Trump of being stuck in a Russian “disinformation bubble.”
“A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” Trump wrote.
The US president wrote that Zelenskyy, whom he described as “a modestly successful comedian”, had “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.”
“The only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle’,” Trump wrote.
Observers noted that the wording was similar to past statements made by the Kremlin about Ukraine and Zelenskyy.
Trump also claimed the US was “successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia.”
Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 for a five-year term but has stayed in power under martial law imposed following the Russian invasion. Ukrainian law does not require elections during wartime.
Zelenskyy said in his video address that he was counting on unity and courage from his compatriots and pragmatism from the US.
“Together with America and Europe, peace can be more reliable, and this is our goal,” Zelenskyy said. “The future is not with Putin, but with peace. And it is a choice for everyone in the world – and for the powerful – to be with Putin or with peace. We should choose peace.”
Meanwhile, former US vice-president Mike Pence, who served with Trump from 2017 to 2021, issued a rare rebuke against Trump’s assertion.
“Mr. President, Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives,” Pence wrote on X. “The Road to Peace must be built on this Truth.”