"He doesn't want to settle": Trump says he does not want to deal with Zelenskyy

US President Donald Trump has said he does not want to deal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy because he believes Zelenskyy is unwilling to reach an agreement with Russia. Trump also described Ukraine's repelling of the Russian advance on the city of Kyiv at the beginning of the full-scale invasion as a matter of luck.

Source: Trump in an interview with Newsmax

Details: Trump said Zelenskyy was not the person we should be dealing with. He claimed that any peace deal with Russia, if one is reached, would be concluded without Ukraine's current leader.

"He doesn't want to settle. He says he wants to settle, but he doesn't. No, I'm not a big fan of Zelenskyy," the US president said.

Trump also claimed that the root cause of the war was Barack Obama's presidency, during which Ukraine was supposedly made to "give up Crimea". The US president described the temporarily occupied peninsula as the "most beautiful piece of land", surrounded by ocean on all sides.

Quote: "Crimea is the most valuable part, by far, of Ukraine. You know what I'm talking about. Four sides of ocean. Most beautiful piece of land. I'm a real estate developer. I know good land."

Details: In the interview, Trump described strikes by Ukraine's defence forces on Russian oil refineries as a disgrace.

Quote: "I want Zelenskyy to stop, and I want Putin… Now, if you tell me that Zelenskyy is again shooting at refineries, all he's doing is making the world oil price higher. Well, I think that's a disgrace."

Details: Trump also attributed the failure of Russia's blitzkrieg against Kyiv in 2022 to the weather.

Quote: "Then it was supposed to be a very quick war. And if you remember the tanks going up the highway right into Kyiv, had the general, who was obviously not a very good general, not made a right turn into farmland, which was soaked and soaking wet from the heaviest rain in 10 years, they say. He went right up into the mud, and it was like quicksand, and those tanks, so they [the Ukrainians] got… I don't know if you call it lucky or not lucky, frankly."

Details: In Trump's view, Zelenskyy should make concessions to Putin because Moscow has a much larger pool of manpower to draw on in a war of attrition.

"But Russia is a massive country. Russia has millions of people," he said.

Background:

• In June 2024, Russian ruler Vladimir Putin issued an ultimatum as a precondition for any negotiations: the complete withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from four oblasts – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – including territories that Russian forces have never controlled.
• Trump's administration has repeatedly called publicly and in its so-called peace plans for Kyiv to accept territorial concessions in favour of the Kremlin and abandon its ambition to join NATO.
• Trump later publicly said that Ukraine needed to hold presidential elections and elect a new leader to replace Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing the Ukrainian president of being unwilling to make concessions.

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