‘I Had a Good Relationship With Zelensky, I Like Him’ – Ukraine at War Update for Oct. 1

In 43 of 50 US states, federal elections have already begun or will begin this month, either by mail-in voting or in-person ballots. Some states are already amid early voting this week.

Also this week, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump seems to be building the case that he is friends with President Volodymyr Zelensky, as polls increasingly show American support for financially backing Ukraine.

On Monday, Trump tried to leverage an allegedly warmed relationship with Ukraine’s president by trying to convince US voters that Zelensky thought Congress should not have impeached Trump the first time during his presidency.

(The second time, Trump was on trial in the House of Representatives for trying to incite a riot to overturn the 2020 election results in America. He was impeached both times.)

“I had a good relationship with Zelensky,” Trump said in an interview published Monday in the Washington Post. “I like him.”

“Because,” he continued, “during the [first] impeachment … [Zelensky] could have said he didn’t know the [conversation] was taped. … But instead of grandstanding and saying, ‘Yes, I felt threatened,’ he said, ‘[Trump] did absolutely nothing wrong’.”

Trump was quoting a conversation that never occurred.

In 2019, Trump was impeached for trying to strong-arm Kyiv into releasing compromising information on his political opponent Joe Biden, via Trump’s traveling attorney, disgraced former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.

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As Trump made such comments in a joint press conference with Zelensky on Friday, singlehandedly trying to exonerate himself, Zelensky stayed silent, knowing that the former president next to whom he stood could be the next one in Washington signing the aid bills for Kyiv if Trump is elected in November.

Indeed, at Friday’s press conference, Trump was full of praise for Zelensky, saying that the Ukrainian president was like “a piece of steel” during Trump’s first impeachment.

The US Constitution provides for the impeachment of a president by a simple majority of the House of Representatives. It is then up to the Senate to vote to acquit or convict, and therefore remove from office, the President, which requires a two-thirds majority of that upper chamber.

Both times that the House impeached Trump, the evenly split Senate acquitted him.

According to the results of a University of Maryland poll released in September, roughly half agreed that “the United States should support Ukraine’s defense from the Russian incursion ‘as long as it takes,’ including 37 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Democrats, up 12 percentage points for both parties since an April poll.

Kremlin lays out a 30% military budget boost, equivalent to $145 billion, unseen since the Cold War

According to a draft budget seen on Monday by AFP, Moscow plans to boost its defense budget by almost 30 percent next year. The draft budget would allocate more spending on the military than welfare and education combined.

The plan would take Russia’s defense budget to 13.5 trillion rubles ($145 billion) in 2025, up from 10.4 trillion rubles in 2024. This increase would bring military spending to levels not seen since Soviet times.

Much of those boosted resources of course would go to missiles and other ammunition needed to continue the country’s ill-advised invasion of Ukraine, as well as the skyrocketing salaries needed to entice unwilling Russians to enlist.

But, AFP noted, that figure does not include other resources being directed to the campaign, “such as spending that Russia labels as ‘domestic security’ and some outlays classified as top secret. Combined spending on defense and security will account for around 40 percent of Russia’s total government spending, seen at 41.5 trillion rubles in 2025.”

“The second [priority, after social spending] is the provision of expenditures on defense and security, providing the resources for the special military operation, and support for families of those participating in the special military operation, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said, using the Kremlin’s officially sanctioned term for its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

The budget announcement came as Russian leader Vladimir Putin marked what he called “Reunification Day”, commemorating Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions in September 2022.

State Department reiterates that the US is fine with Kyiv’s use of its Ukrainian-made weapons on Russian targets

US State Department spokesman Matt Miller stressed in a press conference on Monday that, as a sovereign state, Ukraine can make its own decisions about striking targets in Russia with its domestically produced weapons.

Responding to a question from a Ukrainian reporter about defending against recent Russian attacks on Zaporizhzhia, and whether Ukraine could better defend itself with “permission to attack” Russian targets in self-defense, Miller said, “First of all, Ukraine does not need our permission to strike back against Russian targets.”

 “They are a sovereign country and can use the weapons they build on their own, of which they have many,” Miller added.

Miller also carefully repeated the administration’s position that “in terms of the weapons we have provided them, we have made clear that they can use them to strike back against Russian targets across the border that are launching attacks.

“So Ukraine has an enormous amount of materiel with which to defend itself,” the State Department official said before pointing out US President Joe Biden’s announcement on Friday of an additional $8 billion in weapons for Ukraine.

The correspondent continued, asking, “So if you are OK with Ukraine striking back, then why not let them strike back with your weapons?”

With a wry smile, Miller responded “We have had this conversation before about other weapons systems that you presented to me as the one magic capability that would change the face of the conflict,” without identifying the weapon. “That is not how we see it.”