KYIV – The US national security advisor warned Ukraine’s leader to stop hurling “insults” at Donald Trump, as pressure built Friday on Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sign away precious mineral rights in exchange for Washington’s help defending against Russia.
Tensions between Trump and Zelenskyy over the proposed mineral deal — which Kyiv has rejected — and Washington’s outreach to Moscow have exploded this week in a series of barbs traded at press conferences and on social media.
Zelenskyy has warned that Trump has succumbed to Russian “disinformation,” while the US leader has accused his counterpart of starting the war and branded him a “dictator without elections.”
Earlier on, a handful of moderate Republicans also blasted Trump’s shift over Ukraine.
“Putin started this war. Putin committed war crimes. Putin is the dictator who murdered his opponents. The EU nations have contributed more to Ukraine. Zelensky polls over 50 percent. Ukraine wants to be part of the West, Putin hates the West,” congressman Don Bacon, from Nebraska, wrote on X Wednesday.
“Some of the rhetoric coming out of Kyiv, frankly, and insults to President Trump were unacceptable,” US national security advisor Mike Waltz told a Thursday (Friday in Manila) briefing at the White House.
“President Trump is obviously very frustrated right now with President Zelenskyy, the fact that he hasn’t come to the table, that he hasn’t been willing to take this opportunity that we have offered,” he said.
The United States is a vital financial and military supporter of Ukraine, but Trump has rattled Kyiv and its European backers by opening talks with Moscow they fear could end the war on terms that reward Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The spat has turned personal with Trump falsely claiming Zelensky is hugely unpopular among his own people and the Ukrainian leader saying Trump lives in a Russian “disinformation space.”
Tech tycoon and Trump backer Elon Musk weighed in Thursday, saying Ukrainians “despised” their president and that the US leader was right to leave him out of talks with Russia.
In Wasington, Dc, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back against accusations that the Trump administration has given in to Russia even before talks on ending the Ukraine war begin, saying Washington first wants to see whether Moscow was “serious”.
Russia and the United States agreed to establish teams to negotiate ending the war at talks in Riyadh earlier this week. Neither Ukraine nor its European allies were invited.
US President Donald Trump “wants this war with Ukraine to end. And he wants to know: Are the Russians serious about ending the war, or not serious about ending the war?” Rubio said in an interview on Thursday (Friday in Manila) posted on social network X.
“The only way is to test them, to basically engage them and say, okay, are you serious about ending the war, and if so, what are your demands,” Rubio told journalist Catherine Herridge.
Amid the war of words, Zelensky said Thursday he had held a “productive meeting” with US envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv.
“We had a detailed conversation about the battlefield situation, how to return our prisoners of war, and effective security guarantees,” Zelenskyy said on social media after the meeting.
“Strong Ukraine-U.S. relations benefit the entire world,” he added.
However, there was no joint press conference or statements after the discussions, as would typically accompany such a visit.
Trump is calling for Kyiv to hand over access to its mineral wealth as compensation for tens of billions of dollars in US aid delivered under his predecessor Joe Biden.
Zelenskyy rejected a deal proposed by Trump as it did not include “security guarantees” — Kyiv’s key demand from its Western backers in any agreement with Russia to halt the fighting.
The feud marks a dramatic reversal from US policy under Biden, who lauded Zelenskyy as a hero, shipped vast supplies of arms to Kyiv and hammered Moscow with sanctions.
Trump has instead criticized Zelenskyy and blamed him for starting the war that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago.
“A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday.
Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 for a five-year term and has remained leader in line with Ukrainian rules under martial law, imposed as his country fights for its survival.
While Zelenskyy’s popularity has fallen, 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).
Trump’s invective drew shock reactions from Europe.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was “wrong and dangerous” to call Zelensky a dictator.
The White House said France’s Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s Keir Starmer will visit Trump next week after European leaders held emergency summits in recent days over how to deal with Trump’s threats to overhaul decades of transatlantic security ties.
The Kremlin, buoyed by its rapprochement with Washington, has hailed Trump’s comments.
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 said Wednesday that US 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.
Neither Kyiv nor European countries were invited to high-level talks between top diplomats from Russia and the US in Saudi Arabia earlier this week, deepening fears they are being sidelined.
