Trump’s attempts to denigrate Zelenskyy have led to a surge in Ukrainian unity
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, arrives for talks with Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, at the Munich Security Conference, in Munich, Germany, Saturday, Feb.15, 2025. (Sven Hoppe/DPA via AP, Pool)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Days before the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainians are as somber and tense as they were right before Moscow launched the war. Only now, they aren’t just worried about their longtime enemy.
Ukraine’s stunning new threat comes from its once staunchest ally, the United States, whose support appears to be fading as President Donald Trump echoes the narrative of Russian President Vladimir Putin while pledging to stop the fighting between the two countries.
Over three years of war, Ukraine’s initial unity had started to wear thin, as old frictions and political spats reemerged. But after Trump’s false claims this week that Ukraine is led by a “dictator” who started the war with Russia, even some of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s harshest critics have rallied around him and feelings of unity have surged again.
“Yes, he’s not a perfect president, but he’s not a dictator,” said Kateryna Karaush, a 25-year-old tech worker from Kyiv who like many Ukrainians — and even some Republicans in Congress — is struggling to wrap her head around Trump’s embrace of Russia, which represents a major about-face in U.S. foreign policy.
“It feels like the whole world is against us,” Karaush said.
Against long odds, Ukrainians – with massive military support from the U.S. – have prevented Russia from overtaking their country, even if roughly one fifth of it is now under Russia control.
But after three years of war, both civilians and soldiers are exhausted. Hundreds of thousands have been killed or wounded, tens of thousands are missing, and millions have fled the country.
The mood only became gloomier in recent days as Trump signaled his desire to rapidly bring the fighting to a close on terms that Zelenskyy and many in the West say are too favorable to Russia.
After Trump falsely called Zelenskyy a “dictator” – for legally postponing an election last year — and as reports emerged of U.S. and Russian officials meeting in Saudi Arabia to discuss a possible ceasefire without input from Ukraine, even some of Zelenskyy’s domestic opponents have begun defending him.
“We may have different opinions about Zelenskyy, but only Ukrainian citizens have the right to judge his support,” said Yaroslav Zhelezniak, a lawmaker from the opposition party Holos. “And to publicly criticize him too, because, in the end, he is our elected leader.”
Trump’s harsh words for Zelenskyy have drawn criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans in the U.S. Congress, where defending Ukraine from Russia — with tens of billions of dollars in military aid — has had bipartisan support. But Vice President JD Vance admonished Zelenskyy for publicly warning Trump about falling for Russian disinformation.
On Thursday, the deepening tensions led to the cancelation of a news conference that had been planned to follow talks between Zelenskyy and Trump’s Ukraine envoy over how to end the war.
A poll released Wednesday by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology put public trust in Zelenskyy at 57%. The survey was conducted Feb. 4 to Feb. 9 among 1,000 people living across Ukraine in regions and territories controlled by the Ukrainian government.
“We have a president whom we support. During war, we are united,” said Larysa, a 52-year-old resident from the northeastern city of Kharkiv, who refused to give her last name due to security concerns.
The political rift with the U.S. comes as Ukrainian forces, outnumbered and outgunned, increasingly struggle to hold back Russia’s slow but steady advances.
Speaking from the front lines, some Ukrainian soldiers said they were not panicking yet, and not ready to give up the fight.
“Even if we don’t get enough weapons or if funding is cut, that doesn’t change our duty to (fight),” said a Ukrainian officer who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military rules. “No shells? We’ll take up rifles. No rifles? We’ll grab shovels.”
On Wednesday, Trump echoed one of Putin’s frequent talking points, claiming Zelenskyy, whose term expired last year, must hold elections. But the idea has little traction within Ukraine — even among opposition politicians, who recognize Zelenskyy’s right to postpone elections during wartime.
“Elections are not needed right now because they should only take place when we understand the framework of (a peace) agreement with Russia,” said Volodymyr Ariev, a lawmaker from the opposition European Solidarity party. “Holding elections now would only benefit the Kremlin, further dividing Ukrainians and installing a new president who could sign a deal favorable to Moscow.”
An adviser to Zelenskyy, Mykhailo Podolyak, gave an additional reason for holding off any election until there is peace: Russia might seek to interfere in an electoral process that would already face significant challenges.
Millions of displaced Ukrainians living abroad would struggle to participate — not to mention the hundreds of thousands Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied territories, whose ability to vote would be virtually impossible.
Around 800,000 Ukrainians are currently serving in the armed forces, making it difficult for them to cast ballots without weakening the military. And those fighting would be unable to run for office — a right guaranteed under Ukrainian law.
“Holding elections before a peace agreement with security guarantees is signed would be devastating for Ukraine,” said Valerii Pekar, a professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Business School. “The U.S. and Russia are now united in promoting the idea of ‘elections first, then peace’ — which is the quickest and cheapest way to bring Ukraine down.”
Associated Press journalist Volodymyr Yurchuk contributed from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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Fact-checking Donald Trump’s claims about Zelenskyy and the war in Ukraine
The US president has blamed Ukraine for starting the war and called the country’s president a dictator after American and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia this week.
Inside the 48 hours that Trump turned on Zelensky
As the long-fraught relationship between President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky ripped apart Wednesday, a question that lingered among allies of both men was whether the fight would dash hopes for a US-brokered peace — or, potentially, help it along.
Firing off an angry message on his social media platform, Trump labeled Zelensky a “dictator without elections,” blaming him for strong-arming the United States into spending hundreds of billions of dollars “to go into a War that couldn’t be won.”
It turned into a daylong series of taunts, which Trump amplified during a speech Wednesday night in Miami, where he declared: “Zelensky better move faster. He’s not going to have a country left.”
Both accusations parroted Moscow’s own irony-laden talking points about the war and Ukraine’s president, who declared martial law at the onset of Russia’s invasion, which prevented scheduled elections.
Trump’s post was hardly an isolated attack. For years, Trump has viewed Zelensky skeptically, questioning his decisions and — in an episode made famous during Trump’s first impeachment — pressing him to open an investigation into his then-rival Joe Biden.
Trump has taken to weaving his criticism of Biden and Zelensky together, suggesting Wednesday night that the Ukrainian president was on a “gravy train” with US assistance during the Biden administration.
“If you would have had (Biden’s) administration for another year,” Trump said Wednesday night, “you would have been in World War III and it’s not going to happen now.”
Lately, however, Trump’s aides have been closely monitoring Zelensky’s public statements — in particular his criticism of the US excluding Ukraine from talks with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia this week — with mounting agitation.
Their frustration had been growing before Wednesday, sources said. But it boiled over after Zelensky told reporters at his office in Kyiv that Trump was living in a “web of disinformation.”
Trump privately told aides who were with him in Florida that he wanted to respond directly, which led to his Truth Social post, an official traveling with Trump said. He delivered the diplomatic missile on the way to his golf club in Miami and expanded on his remarks before an audience of hundreds at the evening investment conference in Miami sponsored by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, which hosted talks earlier in the week between US and Russian officials.
“It’s a frustration. There is a strong and legitimate feeling that this brutal war has to stop and that this pathway is being diminished through Zelensky’s public statements,” a second White House official told CNN.
In Zelensky’s view, however, the end to the war Trump is envisioning looks a lot like what Russia has been asking for. Already, members of Trump’s administration have ruled out NATO membership for Kyiv and said US troops would not help guarantee Ukraine’s security when the war ends.
For those reasons, he says he can’t help but speak out.
For months, Zelensky had carefully sought to avoid a full rupture with his temperamental new counterpart in Washington. He arranged a meeting in the weeks ahead of last year’s election meant to allay some of the then-GOP nominee’s skepticism about US involvement in the war.
The men emerged at the start of the discussion at Trump Tower in Manhattan to demonstrate their willingness to get along. Trump said he had a “very good relationship” with the Ukrainian leader — but that he also enjoyed a “very good relationship” with his adversary in Moscow, Vladimir Putin.
“I hope we have more good relations,” Zelensky interjected.
“But, you know, it takes two to tango,” Trump replied.
At the time, the exchange hardly registered. Five months later, it appears to foretell the remarkable rift that is emerging just as Trump looks to sit down with Putin in Saudi Arabia.
Few foreign leaders have been immune to Trump’s mood swings, which during his first term led to scrapped overseas trips, phone calls ended abruptly when Trump hung up, and the imposition of tough new tariffs.
Yet until now, Trump’s frustrations hadn’t seemed to signal such a wholesale shift in American foreign policy, away from the United States’ longstanding allies in Europe and toward the Kremlin.
Many of Trump’s allies said Zelensky should have seen Trump’s wrath coming.
“The idea that Zelensky is going to change the president’s mind by badmouthing him in public media, everyone who knows the president will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration,” Vance told The Daily Mail.
In explaining Trump’s striking public statements, White House officials have insisted his primary – in fact, only – objective is to end the three-year conflict in Ukraine, which he believes was woefully mismanaged by the previous administration.
Insisting upon a settlement to the war, they say, is long overdue after years of grinding conflict. Trump himself has appeared almost agnostic on the precise contours of the settlement that would end the war: “I don’t care so much about anything other than I want to stop having millions of people killed, killed,” he said last week.
Yet how he achieves that objective while castigating Zelensky and aligning himself with Russian talking points isn’t clear.
Trump’s Republican allies in Washington suggested Wednesday the president may have a grand plan in mind.
”What I’m in support of is a peaceful outcome and result in Ukraine,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said when asked if he had concerns about the president’s rhetoric about Ukraine. Thune said he believed Trump and his team are working to achieve peace and “right now, you’ve got to give them some space.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, said Trump is “always positioning for something,” adding that he suspected Trump might be “positioning for a negotiation” with Putin through his comments about Zelensky.
Still, Trump will require buy-in from Zelensky if any negotiated end to the conflict is successful. And if he is serious about keeping American troops out of the conflict, he’ll need European allies to step up with their own peacekeeping troops — a step some nations have already offered.
Some Trump advisers and allies do see a strategy in the bluster. A Trump loyalist who has spoken to the president in Florida in recent days said one reason behind Trump’s lashing out at Ukraine is to scare Europe into ponying up more to defend Ukraine.
“See, there’s a method to the madness,” the person said, pointing to a report that Denmark had pledged to boost spending on arms.
A Trump advisor echoed that sentiment on Wednesday, telling CNN: “If other European countries are half as responsive as Denmark, then that’s a massive win.”
Writing on X, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson — who maintained close ties with Trump during his first term — rebutted most of Trump’s claims but said his former counterpart was driving a larger point.
“When are we Europeans going to stop being scandalised about Donald Trump and start helping him to end this war?” Johnson wrote. “Of course Ukraine didn’t start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor. Of course a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 1935 to 1945. Of course Zelenskyy’s ratings are not 4%. They are actually about the same as Trump’s.”
“Trump’s statements are not intended to be historically accurate but to shock Europeans into action,” he went on.
Indeed, hastily arranged conferences of European leaders in Paris this week hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron suggested Trump’s words were being taken very seriously.
“Russia poses an existential threat to Europeans,” Macron said in an interview with French regional newspapers. “Do not think that the unthinkable cannot happen, including the worst.”
At the same time, Macron is not giving up on Trump entirely. He will be in Washington next week for a meeting, as will British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has said he would be willing to send troops to act as peacekeepers in Ukraine.
Both men spoke to Zelensky on Wednesday following Trump’s insults.
“The Prime Minister expressed his support for President Zelenskyy as Ukraine’s democratically elected leader and said that it was perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time as the UK did during World War II,” Downing Street said afterward.
Trump is increasingly casting himself in the role of peacemaker – no matter the cost – overlooking the frayed western alliances and the upending of US foreign policy.
“We’re successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia, something all admit that only Trump is going to be able to do,” Trump said Wednesday night, speaking about himself again and again in the third person.
“In the Trump administration, we’re going to be able to do it. I think Putin even admitted that.”
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