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President Trump lashed out at his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in a Thursday TV interview after Zelensky said Ukraine was “done” honoring Trump’s demand to hold off on striking Russian energy sites.
“If you tell me that Zelensky is again shooting at refineries, all he’s doing is making the world oil price higher,” the president told Newsmax host Rob Finnerty. “I think that’s a disgrace. There’s plenty of other targets.”
Trump also described Zelensky as “not a good guy for us to deal with” as the White House tries to resurrect attempts to end the four-and-a-half-year-old invasion of eastern Europe by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I think they actually both would like to see it end,” the president added, “but I think I find Zelenskyy to be more difficult to deal with than Putin.”
After Trump announced Sunday that both Moscow and Kyiv had agreed to refrain from striking each other’s power sources with winter approaching, Zelensky claimed that his country unilaterally honored the deal while Moscow launched more than 100 attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in the past week.
The block is out. We’re done,” Zelensky told the Financial Times Thursday while visiting London. “We’re done.”
Amid the latest spat with Trump, which followed a brief period of warming relations between the two, Zelensky attended a summit of European heads of government in Brussels Friday, praising attendees as “real leaders.”
In response to Trump’s Thursday night comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitriy Peskov agreed that “Zelensky doesn’t want to take responsibility and move toward a peaceful resolution.”
“We want to end this war as (quickly) as possible,” the Ukrainian president insisted to reporters in the Belgian capital. “We don’t see now signals from Russian side that they are ready for this, to end this war. That’s why we have to prepare for the winter.”
Meanwhile, Russian strikes were reported in nine separate regions of Ukraine Friday, wounding at least 15 people and leaving hundreds of thousands of households without power. Kremlin authorities. Separately, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses overnight intercepted 644 Ukrainian drones over multiple regions, as well as Crimea and the Black Sea.
With Post wires