OAN Staff Blake Wolf
11:09 AM – Wednesday, February 19, 2025
President Donald Trump criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s poor favorability among Ukrainians, referring to him as a “Dictator” who refuses to hold elections.
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In 2023, Zelensky stopped the country’s presidential voting in the spring while urging Ukrainians that they must concentrate all resources on fighting Russia — not elections, according to AP News.
“Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and ‘Trump,’ will never be able to settle,” Trump wrote in a Wednesday Truth Social post.
“The United States has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe, and Europe’s money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back. Why didn’t Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation. On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING,’” President Trump continued.
Trump went on to call Zelensky a “Dictator without Elections,” adding that “Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – and so it continues…”
President Trump’s comments follow after Zelensky criticized the United States for negotiating with Russia without a Ukrainian representative.
The Ukrainian president also recently declared that Kyiv is not bound to any agreement the United States and Russia makes, adding that Trump lives “in a disinformation space.”
“With all due respect to President Donald Trump as a leader … he is living in this disinformation space,” Zelensky stated on Wednesday. “Everything that Russia and the U.S. can agree on – if they even want to agree on something – concerns their bilateral relations. They certainly cannot negotiate about our people and our lives. About an end to the war without us.”
“Ukraine considers any negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine to be futile,” Zelensky added.
The increased strain in relations between the United States and Ukraine follows after President Donald Trump sent representatives to negotiate with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday without a Ukrainian representative present.
President Trump has been skeptical of sending Ukraine anymore military aid, as the previous Biden administration sent hundreds of billions of dollars in aid without any reservations — though Zelensky recently claimed that his country only received around $75 billion from the U.S.
President Trump and his administration have continually called for peace, adding that a Ukrainian entry into NATO is extremely “unrealistic.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov applauded Trump’s comments regarding NATO on Wednesday, stating that President Trump is the “only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the impudent line of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO.”
“No Western leaders had ever said that, but he had said it several times. This is already a signal that he understands our position.”
Russia has long maintained the position that Ukrainian entry into NATO is unacceptable, as having a hostile foreign military alliance on their border is a “red line” for Moscow. Putin spoke on the Ukrainian-NATO drills near the Russian border in 2021 prior to the Russia-Ukraine war, citing the U.S. strategic bombers involved as a “threat.”
“Strategic bombers, which carry precision weapons and are capable of carrying nuclear weapons, were flying as close as 20 kilometers (12 miles) to our border,” Putin stated prior to invading Ukraine.
On the other hand, Zelensky recently stated that Kyiv requires security guarantees from the United States in peace talks, while also warning of an imminent larger scale Russian invasion into other parts of Europe.
“Knowing that he did not succeed in occupying us, we do not know where he will go. There are risks that this can be Poland and Lithuania, because we believe – we believe that Putin will wage war against NATO,” Zelensky stated on Friday.
Zelensky argued that the United States pulling out of NATO would essentially amount to the “destroying of NATO,” as Russia would be emboldened to launch invasions knowing the United States would not be bound to support the Western European alliance.
“They will begin from those countries … small countries who’ve been in the USSR, in the Soviet Union,” Zelensky stated. “But Europe will not answer, because they don’t have – they will begin to defend itself. Each country defends itself.”
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