President Donald Trump has faulted President Volodymyr Zelensky’s fuss about exclusion in ongoing peace talks, saying Ukraine shouldn’t have gone to war with Russia.
The United States is leading an initiative to resolve the conflict, which started in February 2022 and has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians and soldiers.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Riyadh where an agreement to appoint “respective high-level teams” was reached.
Speaking to reporters in Turkiye after a session with President Recep Erdogan, Zelenskyy stated that talks without the participation of Ukraine was not acceptable.
“We want no one to decide anything behind our backs; no decision can be made without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine,” he declared.
Taking questions during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, Trump dismissed speculation that Russia was insistent on elections in Ukraine.
“We have a situation where we haven’t had elections in Ukraine where we have, essentially, a martial law. The leader – I hate to say it – is down at 4 percent approval rating,” said the president.
“The country is being blown to smithereens; most of the cities are laying on their sides. The buildings are collapsed, it looks like a massive demolition site.
“They (Russia) haven’t done it (fired missiles) in Kiev; I guess they don’t want to shoot too many rockets. They’ve done it 20 percent but they haven’t done it 100 percent. You have cities that are absolutely decimated.
“You could say won’t the people say “it’s been a long time since we had an election.” That’s not a Russian thing; that’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.
“Ukraine is just being wiped out. Look at what’s happening to the cities, there’s not even a building standing. The cities look like Gaza. Actually, percentage wise, more buildings are knocked down than in Gaza. People are tired of it.”
Trump further questioned the use of the funds donated to Ukraine by the U.S. and transnational military alliance, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
“I believe President Zelenskky said, last week, that he doesn’t know where half of the money is. I believe we gave $350 billion, and we have to equalize with Europe. I think Europe has given $100 billion.
“It’s more important for them than for us; we have an ocean in between and they don’t. But where is all the money that’s been given? Where is it going? I’ve never seen any counting of it,” Trump complained.
The president added that he would like to see peace as many people had been killed in a war he insists could have been averted or stopped from escalating.
“I think I have the power to end this war and I think it’s going very well. But today I heard “Oh, we weren’t invited”. Well, you (Zelenskyy) have 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 that would have given them almost all of the land. And no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished, and not one dome would have been knocked down.
‘But they chose not to do it that way. And President Biden, in all fairness, he doesn’t have a clue. He was so bad. It happened (the war) because we had incompetent leadership on so many different levels,” said Trump.
For the time being, Zelenskyy has postponed his Saudi Arabia trip earlier scheduled for Wednesday to avoid “any coincidences”. The new date is March 10.
