He has praised Putin many times in the past and claims to have a close relationship with the Russian President.
On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Trump’s claims of ending the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours, adding that he failed to do so when he was the US President.
Zelenskyy was referring to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and continued fighting in the Donbas region. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine has been engaged in a conflict with Russian-backed forces in the Donbas region. Donald Trump served as the President of the United States from 2016 to 2020.
Zelenskyy, speaking to Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week,” expressed his perspective on the matter through a translator. He acknowledged that the desire to bring an end to the war was admirable, but stressed the importance of this desire being rooted in real-life experience.
“The sole desire to bring the war to an end is beautiful, but this desire should be based on some real-life experience. Donald Trump had already had these 24 hours once in his time. We were at war, not a full-scale war. … (Trump) had that time at his disposal, but he must have had some other priorities,” Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy also dismissed Trump’s previous suggestion that Ukraine should relinquish its contested territories to Russia as a peace offering. “If we are talking about ending the war at the cost of Ukraine—in other words, to make us give up our territories—I think, in this way, [President Joe] Biden could have brought it to an end in five minutes,” Zelenskyy said.