Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, the 19th of February, responded to Donald Trump, who claimed that Ukraine was responsible for Russia’s 2022 invasion, saying that the US President was trapped in a Russian disinformation bubble, according to Reuters and Politico.
Speaking ahead of talks with Trump’s envoy to Ukraine after Trump said Ukraine “should not have started” the conflict, Zelenskyy said he wished Trump’s team had “more truth” about Ukraine.
The Ukrainian leader said that Trump’s claim that his trust rating is only 4% is Russian disinformation and that any attempt to replace him would be unsuccessful.
“We have evidence that these figures are being discussed between America and Russia. This means that President Trump … unfortunately lives in this disinformation room,” Zelenskyy told Ukrainian television.
Zelenskyy cited a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology survey published on Wednesday morning, which found that some 57% of Ukrainians trust his leadership, up five percentage points since December. The poll was conducted between the 4th and and 9th of February.
Zelenskyy told a press conference that Ukraine’s military spending during the war had reached 320 billion US dollars. “We, the Ukrainian people, (covered) 120 billion US dollars, the US and the EU – 200 billion dollars,” The Kyiv Independent quoted Zelenskyy as saying.
He said that the US had given Ukraine 67 billion US dollars for arms and 31.5 billion US dollars for budget support and that the American demand for 500 billion US dollars in minerals was “not a serious conversation” and that he could not sell his country.
Zelenskyy said he was ready to provide full transparency to Trump’s special envoy on Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, during his visit to Kyiv on Wednesday.
He then invited Kellogg to speak directly to the Ukrainian people to find out whether they trust their President, how they perceive Russian leader Vladimir Putin and what their reaction is to Trump’s recent statements on the war.
“We understand the need for security guarantees,” Kellogg told reporters, noting that part of his mission will be to “sit and listen”.
Ukrainian officials, some of whom have criticised their own president, strongly opposed Trump’s remarks.
“We can like Zelenskyy or we can dislike him, we can curse him or we can praise him, we can condemn his actions or we can applaud them… Because he is OUR President,” Boris Filatov, mayor of the Ukrainian industrial city of Dnipro, said. “No lying creature in Moscow, Washington or anywhere else has the right to open him mouth against him.”
“Make Zelenskyy great again,” Ukrainian journalist Pavlo Kazarin quipped.
In less than a month after Trump took office, he has reversed US policy on Ukraine and Russia, ending efforts to isolate Moscow by opening direct talks with Putin and between top officials of the two countries without Ukraine or EU countries.
Following the talks in Saudi Arabia, the Russian sovereign wealth fund said it expected a number of US companies to return to Russia as early as the second quarter of 2025.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praised Trump for saying that previous US support for Ukraine’s efforts to join the NATO military alliance was the main reason for the war in Ukraine.