Zelenskiy demands 'more truth' after Trump accuses Ukraine of starting war

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hit back on Wednesday at Donald Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine was responsible for Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, saying the US president was trapped in a Russian disinformation bubble.

Speaking ahead of talks with Trump’s Ukraine envoy, a day after Trump said Ukraine “should never have started” the conflict, Zelenskiy said he would like Trump’s team to have “more truth” about Ukraine.

The Ukrainian leader said Trump’s assertion that his approval rating was just 4% was Russian disinformation and that any attempt to replace him would fail.

“We have evidence that these figures are being discussed between America and Russia. That is, President Trump … unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Zelenskiy told Ukrainian TV.

The latest poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, from early February, says 57% of Ukrainians trust Zelenskiy.

Less than a month into his presidency, Trump has upended U.S. policy on Ukraine and Russia, ending Washington’s bid to isolate Russia over its invasion of Ukraine with a Trump-Putin phone call and talks between senior U.S. and Russian officials.

Trump said he may meet Putin this month. The Kremlin said such a meeting could take longer to prepare but Russia’s sovereign wealth fund said it expected a number of U.S. companies to return to Russia as early as the second quarter.

Putin said he rated the U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia on ending the war in Ukraine highly. “There are results,” he said, according to Russian news agencies, which did not elaborate.

The talks have excluded both Ukraine and Europe, which Trump says must step up to guarantee any ceasefire. Zelenskiy has suggested giving U.S. companies the right to extract valuable minerals in Ukraine in return for U.S. security guarantees, but indicated that Trump was not offering that.

Zelenskiy told a press conference the U.S. had given Ukraine $67 billion in weapons and $31.5 billion in budget support, and that American demands for $500 billion in minerals are “not a serious conversation”, and that he could not sell his country.

He was expected to meet visiting U.S. Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg, who said as he arrived in Kyiv that he expected substantial talks as the war approaches its three-year mark.

“We understand the need for security guarantees,” Kellogg told journalists, saying that part of his mission would be “to sit and listen”.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lauded Trump for saying that previous U.S. support of Ukraine’s bid to join the NATO military alliance was a major cause of the war in Ukraine.