President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that Ukraine was responsible for Russia's invasion of the country three years ago, arguing Kyiv could have made a deal to avoid the conflict.
“You should have never started it,” Trump said of Ukraine while criticizing President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had expressed concern that his country was not included in talks between the U.S. and Russia in Saudi Arabia.
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"I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it's going very well. But today I heard, 'Oh, well, we weren't invited.' Well, you've been there for three years," Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort. "You should have never started it. You could have made a deal."
Trump went on to say: "I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished, and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way."
The president's comments came after Zelenskyy said in a media conference on a visit to Turkey that "we don’t want anyone making decisions behind our backs and I think this is fair."
"Any country has bilateral relations with other countries; please, discuss whatever you want, but you cannot make decisions without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine, the terms, or other conditions," he said Tuesday. "And we weren’t invited to that Russo-American meeting in Saudi Arabia."
The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington and the Ukrainian government did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Trump's remarks.
Meanwhile, the reaction in Moscow to the change in direction of U.S. foreign policy has been more upbeat.
The U.S. president is "the first, and so far, apparently, the only Western leader who has publicly and loudly said that one of the root causes of the Ukrainian situation was the brazen path of the previous administration to draw Ukraine into NATO," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a speech to Russian lawmakers Wednesday. "No Western leader has ever said this,”
"This is already a signal that he understands our position," Lavrov added in a speech that covered the broader second Trump administration rather than the president's specific remarks Tuesday.
The U.S. and Russia on Tuesday agreed to re-establish embassy staffing, diverging from previous American policy on the matter. Zelenskyy said earlier Tuesday that “Ukraine did not know anything about it.”
Trump, who said last week that he and Vladimir Putin spoke by phone about ending the war, has made several comments bolstering the Russian president. He said during an interview with Fox News last month that Ukraine should not have fought when it was invaded by Russia.
Trump also criticized Zelenskyy when asked by reporters if the U.S. would support Ukraine holding new elections as part of a potential peace deal with Russia.
“When they want a seat at the table, you could say the people have to, wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to say, like, ‘You know, it’s been a long time since we’ve had an election.’ That’s not a Russia thing. That’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also,” Trump said.
In doing so, the president echoed the criticisms of Putin, who has ruled Russia for all but four of the past 25 years, and has repeatedly questioned the electoral legitimacy of Zelenskyy’s continuing leadership.
Ukraine last held a presidential election in 2019 and was due to have held one last April, but Zelenskyy has said in the past that it is not possible for Ukrainians to go to the polls in wartime and that view is also backed up by the country's constitution.
According to an opinion poll released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology research organization, 57% of Ukrainians say they trust Zelenskyy.
