Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Donald Trump of repeating disinformation, a day after the US president falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv, Zelensky pushed back on several unfounded claims Trump made on Tuesday.
“Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Zelensky said.
US and Russian officials held high-level talks on ending the war in Ukraine in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Tuesday, a meeting from which Kyiv was excluded.
The two sides agreed to appoint high-level teams to negotiate the end of the war and said they were working to reestablish diplomatic channels.
It was Kyiv’s complaint about being shut out of the talks that sparked Trump’s tirade of falsehoods on Tuesday.
Speaking late on Tuesday, Trump said: “Today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited. Well, you been there for three years. You should’ve ended it after three years. You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal.”
The incorrect claim that Ukraine somehow started the war has long been repeated by the Kremlin and its supporters. The conflict began in 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula, and began sponsoring pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Moscow then launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, attacking its smaller neighbor at night, sending tanks across the border, bombing Ukrainian cities and sending special forces into Kyiv to assassinate Zelensky.
