Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today said newly elected president Donald Trump lis living in a“disinformation bubble” over his $500bn bill for aid to Kyiv
Zelensky’s comments come after Trump blamed Ukraine for the war with Russia.
Speaking in Kyiv, Zelensky, lambasted Trump for pushing “a lot of disinformation coming from Russia”.
“Unfortunately, President Trump, with all due respect for him as the leader of a nation that we respect greatly . . . is living in this disinformation bubble,” he said.
Zelensky’s response came after Trump’s remarks from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday, in which the US president falsely claimed Kyiv had started the conflict, the largest on European soil since the second world war.
“I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat [at the talks],” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian reaction. The US president said a “half baked” negotiator could have secured a settlement years ago “without the loss of much land”
In his first comments since his conversation with Trump, Russian president Vladimir Putin said he “highly appreciates” the US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia, which he said “made the first step to resuming our work on all sorts of issues of mutual interest”.
“The US negotiators were totally different — they were open to a negotiating process without any biases or judgments about what was done in the past,” he said. “They intend to work together.”