Former President Donald Trump has attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and allies in the White House for failing to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and “wasting” billions of dollars. The stump speech shed light on how the Republican presidential candidate may approach support for Ukraine if he wins the White House in November – and the outlook is not good for Kyiv.
The Republican presidential nominee spoke extensively about his take on Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine for the first time in months during a campaign speech on Wednesday in Mint Hill, North Carolina, about 150 miles outside of Raleigh.
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Trump described the war as “horrible” and blamed “millions” of deaths on the “stupid” negotiation tactics of US President Joe Biden and Zelensky while repeating that he “got along very well” with Putin and would have already ended the invasion.
“What do you have left now, three years of horrible fighting? The country is absolutely obliterated. Millions and millions of people, including all of these great soldiers, they’re dead,” Trump claimed.
He went on to baselessly claim that the devastation in Ukraine was so extensive that it would be “not possible” to rebuild the country and that Biden wasted billions of dollars by supporting Kyiv.
“Those cities are gone, they’re gone, and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refused to make a deal, Zelensky,” Trump claimed. “You have a country that has been obliterated – not possible to be rebuilt. It’ll take hundreds of years to rebuild it. There’s not enough money to rebuild it if the whole world got together.”
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The comments come at a pivotal point in US-UA relations. Zelensky has been meeting with world leaders at the annual UN General Assembly in New York this week to convince allies to continue supporting his besieged country and his newly announced Plan for Victory. Kyiv announced last week that Zelensky was scheduled to have one-on-one meetings with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former President Trump during his visit to the US – with billions in aid on the line and political alliances strained over the upcoming US presidential election in November.
But Trump later said that he would not accept the invitation to meet Zelensky this week, straining relations even more. His refusal to meet may be linked to his assertion on Wednesday that the opportunity for a peace deal had already passed.
“What deal can we make? What deal can we make? The, it’s, it’s demolished. The people are dead. The country is in rubble. And who are these people that allowed this to happen? Who are these people?” he said.
The Republican presidential candidate attacked Biden too for allegedly aiming to send American soldiers to Ukraine – although the current president has stated multiple times that US forces have not considered putting boots on the ground in Ukraine.
“They’re not going to be satisfied until they send American kids over to Ukraine and that’s what they’re trying to do,” Trump claimed. “The moms and dads of America don’t want their kids fighting Ukraine and Russia and we’re not going to have our soldiers die across the ocean.”
A tit for tat with Zelensky
The former president has balked at comments that Zelensky made about his plans to end the war in Ukraine and about his vice presidential nominee, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, during a recent interview for The New Yorker.
“My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how,” Zelensky told the magazine. “With this war, oftentimes, the deeper you look at it the less you understand. I’ve seen many leaders who were convinced they knew how to end it tomorrow, and as they waded deeper into it, they realized it’s not that simple.”
Zelensky also called Vance “too radical” and recommended that he “read up on the history of WWII” before commenting further on the war. Vance doubled down on the campaign line in a call with reporters on Wednesday. “Everything is going to be on the table,” but “nothing is going to be definitely on the table,” he said about future peace negotiations.
“That’s why you have a negotiation, especially with a guy who’s as skilled as Donald Trump, is because he actually should try to have a conversation between both parties and other interested parties about how to bring this war to a close,” Vance said.
“As he said repeatedly, the killing has to stop,” Vance added. “It’s not in America’s interest. I don’t think it’s in Ukraine or Europe’s best interest for this thing to go on indefinitely.”
He claimed that the “biggest problem” is how the war has “distracted and consumed a lot of resources at a time when Americans are suffering.”
Republicans reneging on support for Ukraine
In response, Trump said that Zelensky was “making little nasty aspersions toward your favorite president” during his speech in Mint Hill.
Trump’s stark characterization of the impact of the war and the role of the US reflect a growing sentiment among Republicans on Capitol Hill who have begun taking aim at American support for Ukraine – and Zelensky specifically. Following his comments, some leading Republicans have issued warnings of their own to the allied leader.
“I think it’s a monumental miscalculation by President Zelensky,” Sen. John Cornyn, a senior member of the Republican Party, told CNN. “If he wants support for Ukraine, he should stay out of American politics.”
Sen. John Thune, the Republican Whip out of South Dakota, agreed.
“I think it would be advisable for him to stay out of American politics,” he told CNN. “They have some differences on some issues but it’s not his place to litigate that here in the middle of an American election.”
Other Republicans have called Zelensky’s recent visit to a munitions factory in Pennsylvania a ploy for more funding that is playing into electoral politics.
“The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN.
He called on Zelensky to fire Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, for organizing the trip.
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