WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump met with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday and once more expressed his shock that the Ukrainian chief, whose residents are getting slaughtered nightly by Russian drones and missiles, doesn’t get together with Vladimir Putin, the person ordering these assaults.
“There’s a lot of bad blood with the two presidents,” Trump stated. “These two leaders do not like each other.”
Putin’s assaults on civilian targets in Ukraine have been condemned practically universally, and he has been charged with warfare crimes by the Worldwide Felony Courtroom.
Friday’s assembly got here the day after Trump spoke with Putin by telephone for 2 hours and claimed they’d made “great progress” towards ending the practically four-year-old warfare began when Putin invaded his neighbor in February 2022. On the agenda was the attainable switch of U.S. Tomahawk missiles, which have a variety that may permit Ukraine to hit targets so far as 1,500 miles into Russia.
Trump, after having known as Russia a “paper tiger” in latest weeks due to Putin’s lack of ability to overcome and seize all of Ukraine rapidly, appeared to equivocate on the thought Friday. “What’s going to happen if the United States is in a conflict and we need the Tomahawks? That’s the problem. We need Tomahawks,” he stated.
Trump additionally talked up the thought of assembly once more with Putin within the coming weeks in Budapest — regardless that town is in Hungary, presently run by presumably the one pro-Putin chief, aside from Trump, within the NATO alliance, Viktor Orbán. Town was additionally the place Russia in 1994 promised to not invade Ukraine if it gave up the nuclear weapons it inherited upon the breakup of the Soviet Union.
For his half, Zelenskyy used the identical technique for coping with Trump that has been efficiently adopted by different U.S. allies: praising him profusely.
“Again, congratulations with your successful ceasefire in the Middle East,” Zelenskyy stated, which adopted up on an identical assertion he posted on-line Thursday. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Zelenskyy once more wore a blazer and tie, thereby avoiding the scolding he acquired by the hands of pro-Trump reporter Brian Glenn and Vice President JD Vance for sporting army fatigues fairly than a go well with throughout his February go to to the White Home, his first since Trump’s return to the presidency. That assembly ended with Trump and Vance piling on Zelenskyy for not being adequately grateful, and was considered with horror in European capitals.
Within the days following Putin’s invasion in 2022, Trump praised the Russian chief as a “genius” and “savvy” for having despatched in troops to kill Ukrainians and seize their land. Within the months to observe, together with following his return to workplace 9 months in the past, he blamed Zelenskyy for his nation getting invaded and former President Joe Biden for letting it occur.
Solely in latest months has he begun blaming Putin, too, for his continued drone and missile assaults in opposition to civilians, notably following conversations with Trump.
The frequency of Russian assaults in opposition to Ukraine ramped up dramatically after Trump returned to workplace, in keeping with a BBC evaluation.
Regardless of Putin’s willingness to kill civilians, Trump nonetheless boasts of his “good relationship” with him. He cited that as the rationale for inviting Putin to satisfy with him in Alaska in August and rolling out a pink carpet for him, actually, upon his arrival.
Putin, nonetheless, went proper again to his assaults on Ukrainian cities afterward, regardless that Trump had warned repeatedly that he anticipated Putin to comply with a ceasefire on the assembly.
