The U.S. and Ukrainian presidents have continued their long-distance war of words. Donald Trump wrote on social media that Volodymyr Zelensky “doesn’t want to end this war.”
“[W]ith all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did,” Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The U.S. president said Zelensky could have “made a better deal two years ago than he can now.” “His country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost,” Trump said. He also said Ukraine had lost access to seas and oceans and that its male population had shrunk — “wounded, and/or dead.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Zelensky “presents a false binary” by linking an end to the war with a Ukrainian victory. “The war must end, and that will be with some kind of a negotiated settlement, and President Trump is working on that every day. He’s done it since he came into office,” Bessent said in an interview with NBC News.
He also urged Zelensky to “be very careful” about accusing the United States of restricting Starlink in Ukraine. Bessent said those claims were untrue.
Zelensky said Ukraine, rather than Russia, was being pressured to make concessions. “I believe steps have been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate,” Zelensky said in an interview with Bloomberg.
I’m not saying that’s what our partners are trying to achieve. I don’t want to think our American partners believe the war can end sooner at Ukraine’s expense. But that’s how it looks.
Zelensky again said the United States had deliberately slowed Starlink service in Ukraine, putting Ukrainian military operations at risk, and was also delaying deliveries of missiles for Patriot air defense systems.
“My latest model was: We don’t target Russian diesel, you give us missiles for Patriot systems to protect our facilities. But they just want us to stop attacking diesel. And if we strike that, they will disconnect us from something,” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian president tied the U.S. actions to the November midterm elections, in which Trump is trying to shore up his Republican Party. “Politics is very aggressive during election time,” he said. “I think it is agony now, but after elections, life will continue, and I believe it will be calmer.”
Ukraine’s military and Starlink
- How Ukraine’s military uses Starlink — and what would happen if the Trump administration cut off its satellite communications entirely
- Ukrainian troops lost Starlink access for a day. Elon Musk and the Trump White House both deny responsibility.
The war in photographs: The aftermath of a strike on Kyiv
As Trump and Zelensky trade barbs over who should make concessions to end the war, Russian forces continue to strike Kyiv every day. Ukraine receives no advance warning of the strikes.
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