The past 48 hours have seen relations between Trump and Zelensky rapidly deteriorate while Ukraine and Europe were left out of talks between senior American and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.
Zelensky said peace could not be “brokered behind the scenes without our involvement”. Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump responded by telling the Ukrainian leader: “You’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it … You should have never started it. You should have made a deal.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff in Saudi Arabia after meeting Russian counterparts.Credit: AP
He also repeatedly claimed Zelensky had an approval rating of just 4 per cent, which is wrong. A poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology earlier this month found 57 per cent of Ukrainians said they trusted Zelensky, up from 52 per cent in December.
The notion Zelensky is an illegitimate leader with no popular support is a Kremlin propaganda point. Zelensky told Ukrainian television the US president was trapped in a Russian disinformation bubble and said he wanted “more truth” from Trump’s team.
“We have evidence that these figures are being discussed between America and Russia. That is, President Trump … unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Zelensky said.
As Trump demands security for US weapons and aid, Zelensky has suggested giving American companies the right to extract valuable minerals in Ukraine in return for US security guarantees, but indicated that was not what Trump was offering.
Zelensky told a press conference the US had given Ukraine $US67 billion in weapons and $US31.5 billion in budget support, and that American demands for $US500 billion in minerals were “not a serious conversation”, and that he could not sell his country.
He was expected to meet visiting US Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg, who said as he arrived in Kyiv that he expected substantial talks as the war approaches its three-year mark.
“We understand the need for security guarantees,” Kellogg told journalists, saying that part of his mission would be “to sit and listen”.
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Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lauded Trump for saying the US’s previous support of Ukraine’s bid to join the NATO military alliance was a major cause of the war in Ukraine.
Trump’s upending of US policy puts the country at odds with allies in the 27-member European Union, whose envoys on Wednesday agreed on a 16th package of sanctions against Russia, including on aluminium and vessels believed to be carrying sanctioned Russian oil.
France said it did not understand the logic of Trump’s remark that Ukraine was to blame for Russia’s invasion.
