Former U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested he will “probably” meet Russian President Vladimir Putin this month, while controversially implying that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is responsible for the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Trump dismissed concerns over Kyiv’s exclusion from recent peace talks in Saudi Arabia. Following the negotiations between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Trump expressed confidence in reaching a resolution.
“I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going very well. But today, I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it… You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine,” he said.
Trump also suggested that Russia is eager to halt the conflict, calling the discussions in Riyadh “very good” and stating that Moscow wants to stop the “savage barbarism.”
When asked about supporting Russian calls for elections in Ukraine as part of a potential peace deal, Trump criticized Zelenskyy’s leadership, citing—without evidence—an alleged 4% approval rating for the Ukrainian president. However, a December poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 52% of respondents still trusted Zelenskyy, though this was a decline from previous months.
“Wouldn’t the people of Ukraine say, ‘It’s been a long time since we’ve had an election?’” Trump remarked, asserting that such concerns were not just from Russia but from “many other countries.”
Trump’s comments are likely to stir further debate, especially as the U.S. continues its role in shaping diplomatic efforts to end the war.