President Trump doubled down on his attacks on Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, a day after he blamed Ukraine for starting a war that began with Russia's invasion. In a Truth Social post, Trump accused Zelensky of talking the US into spending $350 billion "to go into a War that couldn't be won." Trump called Zelensky a "Dictator without Elections" and said he "better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left." The president described the war as one that Zelensky, "without the U.S. and 'TRUMP,' will never be able to settle," Politico reports.
"He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden 'like a fiddle,'" Trump said of Zelensky. Earlier Wednesday, Zelensky pushed back against Trump's remarks about Ukraine starting the war, saying the president is in a "disinformation bubble" influenced by Russia. Vladimir Putin has called for Ukraine to hold elections, which are not allowed during wartime under Ukrainian law, the Wall Street Journal reports.
"None of Zelensky's realistic rivals is calling for elections right now," Vitaly Shevchenko, BBC Monitoring's Russia editor, said in a post on X. "And they are just as hawkish on Russia–if not more. The loudest voices demanding fresh polls are heard from Russia—and now the US." At the BBC, he wrote that the points of view he is hearing from Trump are ones that he has heard for years, "from the most virulently anti-Western commentators on Russian state TV."
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In Ukraine, soldiers and civilians alike expressed anger about Trump's remarks—and about attempts to secure a peace deal without Ukraine's involvement, the Journal reports. On social media, people posted images of mass graves found in areas retaken from Russian control, saying, "Russian occupation is not peace, it is a death camp." (More Volodymyr Zelensky stories.)
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