Donald Trump has blamed Volodymyr Zelensky for starting the war with Russia – a day after a massive Russian attack killed 35 people and injured 117 others in Ukraine.
The US president said the Ukrainian leader shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin for “millions of people dead” in the Ukraine war.
“You don’t start a war against someone 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles,” he told reporters at the White House, also blaming former US President Joe Biden for the conflict.
Trump’s comments come after widespread outrage over Russia’s attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Sunday, which was the deadliest Russian attack on civilians this year.
Asked about the attack earlier, Trump said it was “terrible” and that he had been told Russia had “made a mistake”, but did not elaborate.
“Millions of people dead because of three people,” Trump said on Monday. “Let’s say Putin number one, let’s say Biden who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky.”
It is estimated that hundreds of thousands, but not millions, of people have been killed or injured on all sides since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
Questioning Zelensky’s competence, Trump remarked that the Ukrainian leader was “always looking to purchase missiles”.
“When you start a war, you got to know you can win,” the US president said.
Trump has repeatedly blamed Zelensky and Biden for the war, despite Russia invading Ukraine first in 2014, five years before Zelensky won the presidency, and then on a far broader scale in 2022.
Trump further argued on Monday that “Biden could have stopped it and Zelensky could have stopped it, and Putin should have never started it. Everybody is to blame”.
Tensions between Trump and Zelensky have been high ever since their heated confrontation at the White House in February.
During that meeting, Trump accused Zelensky of “gambling with World War Three” and chided him for not starting peace talks with Russia earlier.
US envoy Steve Witkoff, who met Putin in St Petersburg for close to five hours on Friday, said the talks had been “compelling”.
He said the Russian leader’s request had been to get “a permanent peace… beyond a ceasefire”. The detailed discussions had included the future of five Ukrainian territories Russia is claiming to have annexed since it launched the full-scale invasion of its neighbour and “no Nato, Article 5” – referring to the Nato rule that says members will come to the defence of an ally that is under attack.
“I think we might be on the verge of something that would be very, very important for the world at large,” Witkoff told Fox News on Monday.
“There is a possibility to reshape the Russian-United states relationship through some very compelling commercial opportunities that I think give real stability to the region, too. Partnerships create stability,” Trump’s envoy said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was less effusive, describing the contacts as positive but with no clear outlines of an agreement.
In an interview recorded before Russia’s deadly attack on Sumy, Zelensky had urged Trump to visit Ukraine before striking a deal with Putin to end the war.
“Please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead,” Zelensky said in an interview for CBS’s 60 Minutes programme.
At least 35 people were killed when Russian forces fired two Iskander missiles into the heart of Sumy on Sunday.
The blasts took place minutes apart while many civilians were heading to church for Palm Sunday, a week before Easter.
A bus was destroyed in the attack and bodies were left strewn in the middle of a city streeet.
Moscow claimed it had targeted a meeting of Ukrainian soldiers, killing 60 of them, but did not provide any evidence.
Trump insisted he wanted to “stop the killing” and signalled there would be proposals soon, but did not elaborate.
The conflict in Ukraine goes back more than a decade, to 2014, when Kyiv’s pro-Russian president was overthrown. Russia then annexed Crimea and backed insurgents in bloody fighting in eastern Ukraine.
