President Donald Trump says it is time for Ukraine to get a new president, suggesting Volodymyr Zelensky has not done enough to end his country’s war with Russia.
Speaking at the White House on Saturday, Mr Trump said: “I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal″, adding that ”for some reason (Zelensky) never does.”
The president, who on Friday struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to buy diesel from Russia in an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of the US midterm elections, has been urging Mr Zelensky for weeks to stop strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.
He has also sought to blame record US diesel prices on Ukraine rather than the US-led war in Iran, which has elevated world energy prices.
“He wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel,” Mr Trump said, before departing for Tennessee where he was set to rally Republican voters.
An Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research poll conducted last month and published on October 1 found that Americans disapprove of Mr Trump’s handling of Iran, and blame him for higher prices.
Mr Trump also suggested that if he had been US president in 2022, “that war would have never started. There was no reason that that war with Ukraine and Russia started. It started due to incompetence.”
Mr Zelensky has “lost 30% of your country and you’ve had over a million people go between the two of them, over two million people killed. That’s a war that should have never started. And I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president,” Mr Trump said.
Independent estimates are that about 20% of Ukraine’s territory is under Russian control. British defence officials recently estimated that about half a million Russian soldiers have been killed in the war; there are no reliable recent estimates about how many Ukrainians have died.
Mr Trump’s extraordinary intervention came after Russian strikes killed at least 20 people in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian officials said on Saturday.
Three children were among those killed when Russian aerial bombs hit residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said. At least 18 people were wounded.
Russia and Ukraine are locked in a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line, more than four-and-a-half years since Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Ukraine is struggling to counter escalating Russian bombardments that have killed more than 60 people over the past four days.
“Today, Russia expressed its thanks for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Mr Zelensky wrote on X.
He said the attacks show Moscow understands “any easing of pressure to mean they can keep fighting, to mean they can keep dropping bombs on cities”.
“Russia’s choice is war,” Mr Zelensky said in a later Telegram post, after drone attacks on energy facilities and a ballistic missile attack on Kyiv.
He said every additional billion dollars Russia earns from exports would help pay for weapons components, drone upgrades, missile production and the recruitment of mercenaries, and that Moscow would only be ready to stop when its ability to fight diminished.
Moscow received from diesel deal “signals that it is apparently permissible to continue attacking. And this needs to be corrected,” he said, urging the US, Europe and other partners to limit Russia’s capacity to wage war.