Trump blamed Zelensky for Russia's invasion of Ukraine

^{Collage: CNN}
US President Donald Trump has blamed President Volodymyr Zelensky for Russia's aggression against Ukraine and called for elections in the country. This was reported by Deutsche Welle.

Trump said that if a ceasefire regime is introduced, he would not be against sending peacekeepers from European countries to Ukraine to monitor it. However, he stressed that the issue of the presence of US troops in Ukraine is not on the agenda.

"It would be good to have troops there (in Ukraine), I'm not against it," Trump said.

At the same time, he said that he was not talking about American peacekeepers. He replied that "we are far away." But if European countries want it, "it would be great," Trump said.

Trump demands elections in Ukraine

The US president has demanded elections in Ukraine in order to bring Kiev to negotiations. He repeated Russia's claim that elections in Ukraine are necessary. The Kremlin has said that the elections would legitimize the position of Volodymyr Zelensky.

"We are in a situation where there have been no elections in Ukraine for a long time. Martial law has been imposed there. The support for the leader of Ukraine, as hard as it is for me to say, is only 4 percent," Trump said.

He did not provide any evidence or details about where he got the information that Zelensky's approval rating among Ukrainians is so low. According to the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, Zelensky's rating in January 2025 was 50 percent.

Trump also noted that Zelensky does not know where half of the funds allocated by the United States to Ukraine are. He said that Kiev should return the funds or “find out where the money went.”

Trump blames Zelensky for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

On February 18, US and Russian delegations held talks in Saudi Arabia, to which Ukraine was not invited. Trump reacted sarcastically.

“I heard today: ‘Wow, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been here for three years,” he said.

In Trump’s opinion, Russia’s war against Ukraine should have been ended long ago. He said, addressing his potential interlocutors in Kiev: “You should never have started this war. You could have reached an agreement.”

Earlier, Volodymyr Zelensky criticized the discussion of ending the war in Ukraine without Kiev’s participation. According to him, the conditions in which US and Russian representatives met in Riyadh amounted to an ultimatum to Kiev.

Trump has previously argued that Russia's war in Ukraine could have been ended without territorial losses "even with a moderate negotiator."

He did not specify whether Ukraine's territorial losses included Crimea, which was occupied by Russia, and the territories that Russia has illegally annexed since 2014. Follow “Zamin” news on “Telegram”