President Trump, speaking Tuesday afternoon from his home in Florida, appeared to shift three years — if not many decades — of U.S. foreign policy almost 180 degrees, issuing remarks that made his administration sound aligned more with Russian President Vladimir Putin than America’s European allies of the last eight decades.
US President Donald Trump has escalated his attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling him a “dictator” and saying he “better move fast” on a deal to end the war with Russia.
Zelenskyy has slammed Trump’s earlier claim that Ukraine started the war, saying Washington is living in a Russian-made “disinformation space”.
Ukraine foreign minister say ‘nobody can force Ukraine to give up’
In a post on X, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has said the country “withstood the most horrific military attack in Europe’s modern history and three years of a total war”.
He added that the Ukrainian people, and Zelenskyy, “refused to give in to Putin’s pressure”.
“Nobody can force Ukraine to give up. We will defend our right to exist,” he added.
The message was posted just minutes after Trump released his latest rant against Zelenskyy, accusing him of doing a “terrible job” and saying he had to hurry up to make a deal or he was “not going to have a country left”.
Trump says $100bn in US aid to Ukraine ‘missing’. What is he referring to?
Trump’s rant against the Ukrainian leader includes the claim that “Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING’”.
The US president appears to be referring to Zelenskyy’s statement to The Associated Press news agency that the $200bn Washington says it has provided to Ukraine does not match what Kyiv has received.
Trump’s allies, including Musk, have seized on the statement as proof of corruption and possible Ukrainian embezzlement.
But Politifact has debunked the claims. The fact-checking site noted earlier this month that it was not completely clear what aid Zelenskyy was referring to.
Still, the numbers align with public data that shows US funding going towards weapons manufacturing, non-military support, and other regional aid, as well as to direct military support for Ukraine.
The Trump Media & Technology Group, of which Trump is a majority owner, has launched a lawsuit in Sarasota, Florida, against Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes, accusing him of violating free speech rights in the US.
De Moraes is a prominent figure in Brazilian politics: He has ordered the removal of social media profiles linked to right-wing conspiracy theories about Brazil’s voting system, and last year, he even got into a public spat with the social media platform X for its failure to comply with the removals.
In 2023, he also approved a request from federal prosecutors in Brazil to investigate former President Jair Bolsonaro, known as the “Trump of the tropics”. Bolsonaro was charged with attempting a coup earlier this week.
“This is, frankly, what Vladimir Putin would have said — that none of this needed to happen, when in fact, it happened because he wanted it to happen,” Ravi Agrawal, the editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine, told CBS News’ Major Garrett after hearing Mr. Trump’s remarks.
Zelenskyy reacted Wednesday, saying Mr. Trump appeared to be operating in a “disinformation space” fostered by Russia.
Putin, who first sent forces into Ukraine in 2014 and seized control of its Crimean Peninsula in a unilateral annexation never recognized by the U.S. or most of the world, has claimed he was forced to launch his full-scale attack on the neighboring nation due to a threat posed by the U.S.-led NATO alliance spreading its influence eastward toward Russia’s border.
