Berliner Tageblatt - Trump brands Zelensky a 'dictator' as clash deepens

The United States has provided essential funding and arms to Ukraine, but Trump made an abrupt policy shift by opening talks with Moscow weeks after returning to the White House.

"A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Zelensky was elected in 2019 for a five-year term, and has remained leader under martial law imposed due to the Russian invasion as his country fights for its survival.

Trump savaged Zelensky, saying "he refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing (Joe) Biden 'like a fiddle.'"

"In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only 'TRUMP,' and the Trump Administration, can do."

Zelensky's popularity has fallen, but the percentage of Ukrainians who trust him has never dipped below 50 percent since the conflict started, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS).

Under Biden, the United States had lauded Zelensky and pumped money and weapons into Ukraine to help it battle against advancing Russian soldiers.

But Trump held a press conference on Tuesday in which he tore into the Ukrainian leader and repeated Kremlin narratives about the conflict.

- Push for battlefield gains -

Zelensky then accused Trump of succumbing to Russian "disinformation," including Trump blaming Kyiv for supposedly having "started" the war.

"Unfortunately, President Trump, for whom we have great respect as leader of the American people... lives in this disinformation space," Zelensky said in a press conference in Kyiv.

"I believe that the United States helped (Vladimir) Putin to break out of years of isolation," he added, in some of his sharpest criticism yet of the new US administration.

In contrast, Putin hailed progress in talks with the United States.

The Russian leader also claimed his troops had crossed into Ukraine's northeastern Sumy region -- a first ground attack there since 2022 -- but Kyiv swiftly denied the claim.

Both sides are trying to improve their situation on the battlefield amid Trump's push for a ceasefire.

Moscow has been buoyed by Tuesday's talks in Saudi Arabia and Trump's attacks on Zelensky.

Putin said he rated the bilateral talks in Saudi Arabia "highly."

"We made the first step to restore work in various areas of mutual interests," he told journalists while visiting a drone manufacturing plant in his native Saint Petersburg.

Kyiv was not invited to the Riyadh talks as Moscow and Washington moved to sideline both Ukraine and Europe.

Putin said that the United States' allies "only have themselves to blame for what's happening," suggesting they were paying the price for opposing Trump's return to the White House.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov praised Trump as the "only Western leader" who understood that "dragging Ukraine into NATO" was a cause of the conflict.

Tensions between Zelensky and Trump over the new president's position on the war had been building for weeks, before bursting to the fore.

Trump's special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg -- who was not involved in the Saudi talks -- arrived in the Ukrainian capital on Wednesday in what he said was a mission to "sit and listen" to Kyiv's concerns.

Russia, which for years has railed against the US military presence in Europe, wants a reorganization of the continent's security framework as part of any deal to end the Ukraine fighting.

Putin on Wednesday said that Russia and the United States needed to "trust" each other if talks were to be successful.

"It is impossible to solve many issues, including the Ukrainian crisis, without increasing the level of trust between Russia and the United States," he said.

burs/spm/bgs

O.Krause--BTB